UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

AT   LOS  ANGELES 


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THE  CHURCH  AND  THE 
CHANGING  ORDER 


^rt^^ 


THE  CHURCH 
AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 


BY 


SHAILER   MATHEWS 

PROFESSOR  OF  HISTORICAL  AND   COMPARATIVE  THEOLOGY 

IN  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO;    AUTHOR  OF  "THE 

SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF    JESUS,"   "THE   MESSIANIC 

HOPE  IN  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT  ";    EDITOR  OF 

"THE  WORLD  TO-DAY" 


Weto  gorfe 
THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

LONDON :  MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Ltd. 
1907 

All  rights  rturvtd 


Copyright,  1907, 
By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 

mLr:4;*r-0F 

Set  up  am)  elepfrotvped.    Published  April,  1907. 

THE  PACinC 

SEP  1    .1915 


Nortooott  JPrf88 

J.  S.  Cashing  &  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Go. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


GOO 


z. 


XS30 

CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 

PAGE 

The  Crisis  of  the  Church i 

The  nature  of  the  crisis.    I.  The  church  in  the 
presence  of  moral  issues.    II.  Aspects  of  the  crisis. 

CHAPTER  II 
The  Church  and  Scholarship  .  .  .  .  io 
The  relation  of  the  church  to  education.  I.  The 
dependence  of  theology  upon  the  social  mind. 
The  present  intellectual  transition.  The  interpre- 
tative concepts  and  philosophies  of  the  church 
derived  from  a  pre-scientific  age.  —  II.  The  extent 
of  the  breach  between  the  church  and  the  modern 
intellectual  world.  The  new  education  as  a  source  of 
theological  unrest.  The  college  graduate  and  the 
church.  —  III.  The  attitude  of  the  church  towards 
modem  science,  particularly  evolution.  —  IV.  The 
church  and  scientific  biblical  study.  Shall  the 
critic  be  excluded  from  evangelical  churches? 
—  V.  The  danger  of  resulting  schisms  and  intoler- 
Q  ance.  —  VI.  What  the  new  learning  can  do  for  the 

^  church.  —  VII.   Culture  and  the  eternal  life.     The 

0  unnatural  divorce  of  the  two.    The  evangelizing  of 

•^  U  6  6 

culture. 
^  CHAPTER  III 

The  Church  and  the  Gospel  of  the  Risen  Christ     47 
The  negative  attitude  of  certain  phases  of  schol- 

rarship  relative  to  historic  facts.     I.   What  is  the 
gospel?    I.  In  its  New  Testament  sense.    2.  Its 
"$  V 


VI  CONTENTS 

PACK 

historical  elements.  —  II.  Can  this  gospel  of  feet  be 
preached  effectively  to  this  modern  world?  i.  The 
tendency  to  replace  fact  by  pragmatic  philosophy. 

2.  The  Jesus  of  experience  and  the  historical  Jesus. 

3.  Specific  objections  to  preaching  this  historical 
gospel,  (a)  Criticism,  (b)  miracles,  (c)  eschatol- 
ogy.  —  III.  As  to  the  preaching  of  the  gospel  of 
immortality.  Objections  to  such  preaching.  Evo- 
lution and  immortality.  The  real  issue  before  the 
church.  —  IV.  How  shall  the  gospel  be  preached? 
I.  With  primitive  insistence  upon  the  historic  ele- 
ments. 2.  Distinguishing  facts  from  their  inter- 
pretation. 3.  By  the  use  of  current  intellectual 
conceptions. — V.  The  evangelicalism  of  the  man 
who,  on  unhistorical  grounds,  believes  the  gospel  of 
the  resurrection  of  Jesus. 

CHAPTER  IV 

The  Church  and  the  Gospel  of  Brotherhood  .  91 
The  power  of  the  church  to  emphasize  generic 
human  interest  as  a  basis  of  real  fraternity.  I.  The 
social  content  of  evangelic  religion,  i .  Religion  as 
the  expression  of  a  unifying  factor  in  life.  2.  The 
gospel  as  a  basis  of  fraternity.  —  II.  The  method  of 
the  church  in  bringing  about  fraternity,  i.  Its 
appeal  to  life  not  philosophy.  2.  Its  insistence 
upon  the  presence  of  God  in  his  world. 

CHAPTER  V 

The  Church  and  Social  Discontent  .  .  .116 
Alienation  of  the  masses  from  the  church.  I.  The 
three  types  of  discontent,  i.  Economic.  2.  Politi- 
cal. 3.  Religious.  —  II.  The  real  nature  of  social 
discontent,  i.  It  is  not  pathological.  2.  It  is 
based  upon  idealism.    3.  Not  exclusively  economic. 


CONTENTS  Vll 

PAGE 

— III.  The  difficulties  in  evangelizing  this  discontent. 

I.  The  church  as  a  representative  of  an  economic 
class.  2.  The  church  member  and  politics.  3.  The 
suspicion  of  religion  itself.  —  IV.  How  shall  dis- 
content be  evangelized?  i.  The  necessity  of  a 
social  gospel.  2.  Discontent  not  yet  widespread 
hostility  to  the  church.  3.  The  church  as  the 
representative  of  spiritual  life.  4.  The  education  of 
Christian  sympathy.  5.  The  church  not  the  cham- 
pion of  passive  submission. 

CHAPTER  VI 

The  Church  and  the  Social  Movement       .       .    150 
What  is  the  social  movement?    I.   The  unfriend- 
liness of  the  church  and  the  social  movement.  — 

II.  The  mission  of  the  church  dynamic  not  legisla- 
tive. —  III.  The  two  indispensable  services  the 
church  can  render  the  social  movement,  i.  It  can 
keep  social  impulses  law  abiding.  2.  It  can  guaran- 
tee sanity  in  reform.  —  IV.  The  method  of  the 
church  as  contrasted  with  the  method  of  socialism.  — 
V.   The  social  content  of  Christian  individualism. 

—  VI.  Will  the  chiu-ch  fece  the  problem? 

CHAPTER  VII 

The  Church  and  Materialism  .  .  .  .182 
Materialism  the  greatest  enemy  of  the  church. 
I.  Philosophical  materialism. — II.  Materialism  of 
wealth.  Danger  of  overstatement.  Corporate  and 
individual  ethical  codes.  Consequent  dangers  to 
the  church.  The  church  must  oppose  materialism 
in  the  labor  movement  as  truly  as  in  capitalism. 

—  III.  The  materialization  of  the  home.  Woman 
as  an  income-earner.     The  question  of  divorce. 

—  IV.    The  materialism  of  amusements.    Athletic 


vm  CONTENTS 

rAGB 

sports.  The  theatre.  —  V.  The  materialism  of 
gambling.  —  VI .  Materialism  in  religion  to  be  met 
by  an  insistence  upon  reality.  The  religion  of  the 
average  man.  —  VII.  The  call  to  the  church. 

CHAPTER   VIII 

The  Sword  of  the  Christ 222 

The  call  to  heroic  and  self-sacrificing  struggle. 

—  I.  The  hostility  of  the  church  to  sin.  The  new 
social  conscience.  —  II.  The  call  to  heroic  leader- 
ship. The  decrease  in  the  number  of  students  for 
the  ministry.  —  III.  The  theological  seminary  and 
social  leadership,  i.  The  subsidizing  of  students 
for  the  ministry.  2.  The  problem  of  a  theological 
education.  —  IV.  The  church  as  a  social  leader. 
— V.    The  modem  man  as  an  evangelical  leader. 

—  VI.  The  call  to  heroic  service. — VII.  Con- 
clusion. 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE 
CHANGING  ORDER 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE 
CHANGING  ORDER 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  CRISIS  OF  THE  CHURCH 

*'  The  old  order  changeth,  yielding  place  to  new, 
And  God  fulfils  himself  in  many  ways, 
Lest  one  good  ciistom  should  corrupt  the  world.'* 

Every  age  is  apt  to  think  itself  the  turning-point 
of  history.  In  a  sense  it  is.  A  turn  of  a  kaleido- 
scope, be  it  never  so  sUght,  determines  the  combina- 
tions of  a  later  adjustment  of  the  bits  of  glass.  But 
"crisis"  is  something  more  than  a  relative  term.  It 
describes  a  situation  which  is  no  ordinary  member 
of  a  line  of  antecedents  and  consequents,  but  one 
that  assures  radical  changes  in  the  immediate  future. 
Such  a  situation  is  the  culmination  of  a  slow  gather- 
ing of  forces  and  compels  a  choice  between  sharply 
drawn  alternatives.  It  is  not  necessarily  precipitated 
by  great  issues.  Quite  as  often  it  is  occasioned  by 
events  unimportant  in  themselves,  which  are  so 
related  to  a  new  social  mind  as  to  set  in  motion  an 


2    THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

entire  group  of  forces  as  a  match  kindles  a  huge  fire 
when  once  the  fuel  is  properly  laid.  The  difference 
between  a  revolution  and  a  crisis  is  the  difference 
between  that  fire  and  the  moment  when  some  one 
with  a  Ughted  match  in  hand  pauses  to  decide  whether 
the  fire  shall  be  lighted. 

An  age  is  usually  aware  of  its  crisis.  The  litera- 
ture of  the  eighteenth  century  abounds  in  the  opin- 
ions of  intelHgent  observers  both  of  France  and 
America  that  history  was  at  one  of  its  turning-points. 
In  the  same  way  the  men  of  our  own  day  are  growing 
increasingly  aUve  to  the  fact  that  we  are  facing  re- 
markable social  changes  in  the  immediate  future. 
In  fact,  when  one  recalls  the  rapidity  with  which 
events  are  moving,  it  is  apparent  that  those  changes 
are  already  taking  place.  The  old  order  is  indeed 
changing,  yielding  place  to  new. 

I 

The  church  as  an  institution  is  somewhat  difficult 
of  definition.  "We  have  a  great  number  of  churches, 
from  the  vast  organization  of  Rome  to  the  group 
of  men  and  women  in  some  little  town  who  are  at- 
tempting to  reproduce  the  democracy  of  primitive 
Christianity,  but  it  has  even  been  argued  that  the 
church  in  a  generic  sense  does  not  exist.    But  such 


THE   CRISIS   OF  THE   CHURCH  3 

precision  is  hardly  justified  by  the  ordinary  usage 
of  terms.  When  we  speak  of  the  church,  we  mean 
institutionaUzed  Christianity,  the  Christian  religion 
as  represented  by  its  organized  adherents.  It  is  as 
fair  to  speak  of  it  in  this  general  way  as  it  is  to  speak 
of  the  state.  Once  let  misfortune  fall  upon  any  one 
of  its  various  branches  and  all  Christendom  sorrows. 
A  massacre  of  missionaries  in  China,  the  death  of  a 
Pope,  a  struggle  for  religious  liberty,  bring  up  into 
clearest  consciousness,  as  it  were,  a  subliminal 
sense  of  Christian  unity,  which  eludes  our  daily 
experience. 

The  church  of  to-day  is  face  to  face  with  the  for- 
mative influences  which  are  making  to-morrow. 
By  the  division  of  labor  bom  of  social  history  it  has 
become  only  one  of  many  directive  forces  in  society. 
Scholarship,  business,  socialism,  popularized  phi- 
losophy, amusements,  national  aggrandizement,  are 
only  a  few  of  the  agencies  which  are  cooperating 
to  make  to-morrow  very  diflferent  from  to-day.  To 
an  extent  that  escapes  the  superficial  observer,  the 
church  is  itself  being  affected  by  these  forces;  but 
far  more  important  than  this  fact  is  the  other  that 
to-day,  as  at  so  many  times  in  the  past,  the  church 
must  face  the  vital  decision  as  to  what  paxt  it  shall 
have  in  producing  the  new  world. 


4    THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

In  a  large  way,  transitions  involve  morals  as  truly 
as  politics  and  economics.  The  breaking  down  of 
tradition  and  of  inherited  thought  and  standards 
characterizes  our  entire  social  life.  Pathetic  enough 
is  the  perplexity  of  soul  that  results.  Men  have  not 
ceased  to  want  to  do  right,  but  they  have  become 
confused  as  to  what  really  constitutes  right.  The 
growing  moral  sense  refuses  to  submit  to  the  con- 
trol of  the  past,  but  is  not  convinced  as  to  just  what 
course  of  conduct  newer  ideals  demand.  Just  at 
present  we  are  seeing  how  acute  the  struggle  between 
the  old  and  the  new  can  become  because  of  a  de- 
termined efifort  to  identify  legaUty  with  morality. 
Laws  that  have  been  neglected  are  now  being  en- 
forced. Sins  that  have  been  laughed  at  are  now 
being  punished. 

But  the  age  does  not  yet  see  its  way  clearly.  On 
the  one  side  there  is  the  effort  to  maintain  by  law 
the  sanctity  of  a  competitive  system,  and  on  the 
other  there  is  the  tremendous  if  not  irresistible  ten- 
dency toward  collective  bargaining  between  con- 
sohdated  labor  on  the  one  hand  and  consolidated 
capital  on  the  other.  At  the  same  time  there  is  the 
general  breakdown  among  Christian  people  of  a 
conventional  moraUty  which  resulted  from  the 
teaching  of  the  church  in  a  less  sophisticated  age. 


THE   CRISIS   OF  THE   CHURCH  5 

A  search  for  wealth  and  for  creature  comforts  is 
precipitatmg  multitudes  of  questions  which  must 
be  answered,  but  which  are  extremely  perplexing 
because  we  lack  precedents  in  accordance  with 
which  to  answer  them. 

As  never  before  there  is  need,  therefore,  of  a 
sturdy  insistence  upon  the  sinfulness  of  sin.  One 
of  the  greatest  dangers  that  besets  the  church  is 
that  in  some  way  it  shall  adopt  a  "worldly"  atti- 
tude in  moral  matters ;  that  it  shall  lose  its  sensitive- 
ness to  evil  and  look  with  too  large  tolerance  upon 
moral  lapses.  It  is  idle  to  preach  the  gospel  to 
people  who  regard  it  as  a  means  of  mere  literary 
culture.  The  average  man  will  not  call  a  physi- 
cian imtil  he  is  convinced  that  he  is  ill.  The  pulpit 
has  partly  abandoned  attempts  to  arouse  moral  dis- 
content in  the  himian  soul  and  has  been  giving 
prominence  to  congratulatory  descriptions  of  men 
as  the  sons  of  God.  Admirable  as  this  hopefulness 
regarding  humanity  may  be,  it  will  be  a  sad  day  for 
society  if  its  moral  teachers  undertake  to  widen  the 
strait  gate  and  broaden  the  narrow  way.  The 
changing  attitude  of  the  church  toward  customs 
and  ideals  it  once  frankly  condemned  may  be  due 
to  a  clearer  sense  of  the  legitimacy  of  much  that 
gave  attractiveness  to  Greek  culture,  but  it  is  not 


6    THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

sufficient  to  base  all  appeals  for  repentance  and 
restitution  upon  the  joy  of  living.  Society  needs  to 
be  convinced  afresh  of  the  elemental  distinction 
between  evil  and  good  as  redefined  by  the  changing 
condition  of  our  ever  more  complex  life.  Knowl- 
edge is  not  virtue  and  art  is  not  righteousness. 
A  social  order  devoted  to  either  must  be  steadied 
by  ideals  that  are  drawn  from  the  fundamentals  of 
the  gospel  of  Jesus  for  which  the  church  stands. 

II 

This  is  the  real  crisis  of  the  church,  —  the  need 
that  it  define  its  attitude  toward  formative  forces 
now  at  work.  Will  it  move  on  indifferent  to  their 
existence,  or  will  it  cooperate  with  them,  correct 
them,  inspire  them  with  its  own  ideals,  and  insure 
that  their  results  shall  insure  a  better  to-morrow? 
A  new  age  is  imminent.  Will  the  church  guaran- 
tee that  it  shall  be  in  no  narrow  individualistic  way 
Christian  ? 

It  is  no  unique  crisis.  It  is  the  same  that  has 
confronted  the  church  since  its  beginnings.  In  the 
early  centuries  the  church  was  called  upon  to  deter- 
mine its  attitude  toward  the  Roman  Empire  and  the 
Greek  philosophy.  Should  it  oppose  them  or  should 
it  seize  upon  them  as  agents  for  its  own  growth  ?    In 


THE   CRISIS   OF   THE   CHURCH  7 

the  Middle  Ages,  face  to  face  with  the  processes 
which  gave  rise  to  a  new  Europe,  it  had  to  face  the 
question  of  participating  as  a  controlling  element 
in  the  mixture  of  races  and  the  rise  of  a  new  imperial 
idealism.  During  the  Renaissance  it  had  to  deter- 
mine whether  it  would  oppose  or  exploit  the  new 
learning.  In  the  Reformation,  with  travail  of  soul, 
it  fixed  its  relation  to  the  new  individualism  in 
religion  and  politics.  In  the  era  of  revolutions  it 
was  forced  to  choose  between  a  philosophy  claiming 
the  supremacy  of  natural  rights  and  an  all  but  uni- 
versal recognition  of  vested  privileges. 

He  would  be  a  rash  man  who  would  say  that  in 
all  these  crises  the  church  acted  in  the  wisest  or  best 
fashion.  It  is  easy  enough  to  look  across  the  years 
and  see  that  too  often  it  made  fundamental  mis- 
takes, the  fruits  of  which  have  handicapped  the 
progress  both  of  itself  and  of  society.  Yet  it  can- 
not be  denied  that  in  each  of  these  and  other  great 
critical  periods  of  western  civilization  there  were  men 
like  Athanasius,  Augustine,  Ambrose,  Hildebrand, 
Luther,  Charming,  and  Maurice  who  consciously 
undertook  to  bring  the  church  into  dynamic  relation 
with  the  forces  that  were  determining  the  future. 
Each  one  of  these  leaders  was  a  true  child  of  his  age, 
but  to  them  and  to  their  fellows  was  due  the  splendid 


8    THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

progress  made  by  the  church  in  some  of  its  various 
activities.  The  church  of  the  twentieth  century  not 
only  owes  them  an  incalculable  debt  of  gratitude, 
but  also  finds  in  them  an  example. 

Ill 

The  present  crisis  of  the  church  is  not  bom  of 
any  single  controlling  force.  It  is  far  more  com- 
plicated. The  church  must  decide  what  shall  be 
its  attitude  to  a  group  of  formative  influences  the 
final  results  of  which  no  man  dare  forecast.  The 
task  before  it  is  magnified  by  the  fact  that  the 
church  itself  is  not  united.  On  the  one  extreme  are 
aggressive  conservatives,  and  on  the  other  side  are 
aggressive  radicals  as  keen  to  destroy  inherited 
tenets  as  were  ever  the  Encyclopaedists.  Nor  are  the 
forces  themselves  to  be  treated  in  precisely  the  same 
way.  There  are  influences  which  the  church  must 
oppose  with  all  possible  vigor  for  the  sake  of  pre- 
serving faith  in  spiritual  realities;  there  are  other 
influences  which  must  be  appropriated  by  the  church 
as  agencies  with  which  it  may  beat  down  moral 
error  and  make  Christian  truth  more  dynamic  in 
the  new  social  life.  Sane  discrimination,  a  tolerance 
bom  of  conviction  and  Christian  charity,  a  keen 
perception  of  that  unity  of  experience  which  pre- 


THE   CRISIS   OF  THE   CHURCH  9 

vents  the  divorce  of  men's  economic  life  from  the 
idealism  of  thought  and  faith,  a  loyalty  to  the  essen- 
tial rather  than  to  the  passing  elements  of  Christian- 
ity, are  cognition  of  man's  social  as  well  as  individual 
worth  —  all  these  are  indispensable  for  the  church 
of  to-day  if  it  would  determine  to  the  best  advantage 
the  position  of  the  church  of  to-morrow. 

The  relation  of  the  church  to  the  various  intel- 
lectual, religious,  and  social  phases  of  the  crisis  is 
more  than  an  academic  question.  It  is  a  matter  of 
life  and  death  for  both  the  church  and  the  new 
social  order.  No  man  who  faces  it  honestly  can 
treat  it  flippantly.  He  will  not  view  it  with  that 
myopic  optimism  that  besets  the  most  cautious  of 
us,  but  neither  will  he,  after  the  fashion  of  religious 
demagogues,  condemn  the  church  as  an  outworn 
institution.  Christianity  is  no  dying  faith.  It 
is  splendidly  vital.  The  church  is  not  moribund. 
It  faces  dangers,  but  they  are  bom  of  its  strength 
quite  as  much  as  of  its  weakness.  It  is  not  as  com- 
pletely in  touch  with  its  age  as  it  should  be,  but  it 
can  be  brought  into  closer  union  with  the  other  forces 
that  are  making  our  new  social  order. 

It  can  be  brought  into  such  union.  Shall  it  be  ? 
That  is  a  question  that  the  church  itself  must  answer. 

And  that,  I  repeat,  is  the  crisis  the  church  faces. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  CHURCH  AND  SCHOLARSHIP 

The  church  has  always  stood  for  scholarship. 
From  the  days  when  the  apostles  had  Mark  for  a 
minister  of  the  word,  it  has  held  to  the  necessity  of 
training  its  youth.  There  are  few  institutions  of 
higher  learning  in  America  which  do  not  owe  their 
foundations  to  the  need  of  an  educated  ministry. 
Within  later  years,  it  is  true,  provision  for  the  educa- 
tion of  young  men  and  women  has  been  made  by 
large  appropriations  by  both  federal  and  state  govern- 
ments, but  even  in  such  institutions  the  great  body 
of  instructors  are  at  least  nominally  connected  with 
some  church.  Universities  no  longer  care  primarily 
for  the  training  of  ministers  and  seldom  maintain 
theological  departments,  but  they  are  none  the  less 
due  in  a  large  measure  to  the  initial  impulse  which 
was  given  collegiate  education  by  the  demands  of  re- 
ligious bodies.  And  notwithstanding  the  enormous 
increase  of  enrolment  in  such  noble  institutions 
as  the  state  universities  of  Michigan,  Wisconsin, 
Minnesota,  Illinois,  Missouri,  Kansas,  Nebraska, 
Indiana,  and  Ohio,  the  probability  is  that  the  major- 


THE  CHURCH  AND  SCHOLARSHIP  II 

ity  of  college  students  are  in  institutions  which,  like 
Harvard  and  Yale,  owe  their  inception  to  ecclesias- 
tical initiative. 

But  however  fostered,  higher  education  presents  a 
problem  which  is  of  vital  importance  to  the  future 
of  the  church.  The  struggle  between  traditional 
theology  and  science  really  exists.  There  may  not 
be,  as  some  assert,  any  struggle  between  religion  and 
science,  although  it  is  possible  that  we  are  too  opti- 
mistic even  as  regards  this.  However  that  may  be, 
the  relation  of  the  church  to  our  present  educational 
tendencies  really  cannot  be  overlooked.  For  to 
understand  it  is  to  incite  the  church  to  new  efifort 

and  success. 

I 

Theology  as  the  description  and  expression  of 
man's  religious  experience  has  always  been  to  a  high 
degree  controlled  by  current  philosophies  and  world- 
views.  As  every  reader  of  church  history  knows, 
the  great  intellectual  achievement  of  the  second  and 
third  Christian  centuries  was  the  systematization  of 
the  gospel  in  accordance  with  a  current  philosophy. 
But  even  before  those  years  of  theological  crystalliza- 
tion, the  facts  of  Jesus'  life  and  of  Christian  ex- 
perience had  been  interpreted  and  given  theological 
significance  by  Paul.    And  although  he  rose  above 


12   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

the  trivialities  of  rabbinical  exegesis,  Paul  was  the 
product  of  the  rabbinical  schools,  and  his  thought 
was  to  no  small  degree  controlled  by  the  concepts  of 
current  Judaism.  In  a  very  true  sense  it  may  be 
said,  therefore,  that  the  New  Testament  teaching  and 
historic  orthodoxy  as  formulated  by  the  ecumenical 
councils  are  both  alike  to  a  high  degree  controlled  by 
the  philosophical  concepts  of  the  Graeco-Roman  age. 

Similarly  in  the  case  of  the  confessional  statements 
which  resulted  from  the  struggle  of  the  Reformation 
period.  They,  too,  were  made  by  men  who,  however 
learned  in  ancient  literature  and  in  the  current 
dialectic,  were  far  enough  from  being  controlled  by 
the  presuppositions  and  conclusions  current  in  our 
own  day. 

The  difference  between  the  schools  of  theology  of 
the  twentieth  and  the  fourth  century  lies  not  so 
much  in  the  facts  of  the  gospel  as  in  the  methods 
and  presuppositions  with  which  each  age  systema- 
tizes these  facts.  The  church  must  preach  some 
form  of  theology,  and  theology  in  the  final  analysis 
is  the  result  of  an  attempt  of  the  thinkers  of  an  age 
to  make  religion  intelligible  to  their  fellows.  It  is 
the  correlation  of  the  facts  of  religion  with  the 
other  things  they  know. 

It  is  easy  enough  to  see,  therefore,  that  the  church 


THE   CHURCH  AND  SCHOLARSHIP  1 3 

is  concerned  with  the  results  of  modem  scholarship, 
for  scholarship  is  really  determining  the  method  of 
thought  by  which  the  church  must  formulate  its  own 
convictions.  The  Christian  teacher  may  disapprove 
and  therefore  combat  the  intellectual  environment 
in  which  his  fellows  live;  he  may  approve  it  and 
exploit  it;  but  in  the  very  nature  of  the  case  he 
cannot  ignore  it. 

Now  it  is  this  very  simple  fact  that  lies  back  of 
a  very  critical  situation.  The  church  of  to-day  is 
living  in  the  midst  of  the  most  extraordinary  intel- 
lectual transition  that  the  world  has  ever  seen. 
Calvin  and  Athanasius,  had  they  met,  could  have 
understood  each  other's  philosophical  preconcep- 
tions and  intellectual  methods  reasonably  well;  but 
Calvin  would  have  had  no  small  difficulty  in  coming 
to  an  understanding  with  Schleiermacher  and  would 
have  regarded  Ritschl  as  deserving  the  fate  of 
Servetus.  Kant  in  philosophy  and  Darwin  in  science 
stand  for  something  more  than  mere  phases  of  in- 
tellectual life.  Since  their  day  we  have  lived  in  a 
world  of  thought  peopled  with  new  intellectual 
citizens.  The  teacher  of  religion  can  stand  aloof 
from  the  reconstruction  which  the  new  science  and 
the  new  philosophy  are  determining  only  by  stand- 
ing apart  from  the  world  itself. 


14   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

Even  if  this  intellectual  revolution  were  purely 
professional,  it  would  be  something  with  which  the 
church  is  vitally  connected.  For  the  great  theolo- 
gies from  that  of  Paul  to  that  of  Ritschl  have  been 
the  product  of  university  men,  not  of  the  masses. 
But  the  revolution  is  far  enough  from  being  limited 
to  the  university.  It  permeates  the  entire  educa- 
tional world.  Our  boys  and  girls  in  the  high  school 
are  not  only  being  taught  different  facts  from  those 
which  controlled  the  men  who  built  up  the  great 
theologies  of  both  the  Roman  Catholic  church  and 
the  Protestant  bodies,  but  they  are  being  taught  to 
relate  these  facts  in  accordance  with  very  dififerent 
working  hypotheses  and  to  interpret  them  in  accord 
with  very  different  preconceptions.  The  high  school 
pupil  smiles  at  the  scientific  conjectures  of  the  school- 
man and  finds  the  theories  of  the  universe  held  by 
Ptolemy  unthinkable.  And  what  is  true  of  the  high 
school  pupil  is  rapidly  becoming  true  of  that  great 
world  of  unschooled  men  and  women  who  pick  up 
crumbs  of  philosophy  and  science  from  the  daily 
newspapers.  Scholarship  is  shaping  the  thinking  of 
all  classes.  With  a  half-dozen  exceptions,  it  is  true, 
the  theological  seminaries  hold  aloof;  but  imi- 
versities,  colleges,  high  schools,  grade  schools, 
kindergartens,  are  alive  with  the  new  enthusiasm. 


THE   CHURCH   AND   SCHOLARSHIP  1 5 

Over  against  this  tremendous  revolution  stands 
traditional  dogma  with  a  theory  of  the  universe  and 
a  psychology  and  a  philosophy  derived  from  the 
Hebrews,  the  Greeks,  the  Romans,  and  the  Alexan- 
drians. Many  a  high  school  pupil  who,  in  his  text- 
book of  geology,  is  taught  that  the  world  is  the  out- 
come of  processes  extending  across  millions  of  years, 
is  taught  by  his  Sunday-school  teacher,  that  he  must 
take  it  on  faith  that  the  world  was  created  by  the 
successive  acts  of  God  in  six  days.  The  biologist 
who  is  devoting  his  days  to  finding  the  secret  of  life 
is  taught  by  his  pastor  —  if  he  has  a  pastor  —  that 
a  spirit  was  breathed  into  a  man  miraculously  made 
of  clay,  creating  in  him  an  entirely  dififerent  order  of 
life  from  that  found  in  the  rest  of  the  animal  world, 
and  that  woman  was  made  miraculously  from  Adam's 
rib.  The  student  of  comparative  religion  who  has 
watched  the  slow  accumulation  of  the  sacred  litera- 
tures of  the  nations  is  told  that  the  literature  of 
the  Hebrews  was  written  under  such  dictation  of 
the  Holy  Spirit  as  to  be  infallible  and  permanently 
authoritative  not  only  in  religion  but  in  science, 
history,  and  literary  criticism.  It  is  little  wonder 
that  the  world  of  scholarship,  professional  or  merely 
amateur,  finds  itself  increasingly  out  of  sympathy 
with  the  church  as  the  representative  of  such  teach- 


1 6   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

ing.  It  is  not  so  much  that  it  has  any  controversy 
with  religious  teachers;  it  simply  finds  itself  in- 
capable of  appreciating  their  point  of  view  or  of 
respecting  their  opinions. 

The  situation  is  not  helped  very  much  by  the 
proposal  to  disregard  theological  formulations  and 
return  to  the  gospel  itself  as  it  is  found  unsystema- 
tized in  the  New  Testament.  The  world  of  scholar- 
ship still  finds  itself  in  perplexity  as  it  listens  to  the 
authoritative  word  of  the  church.  For  in  the  New 
Testament  there  are  concepts  which  the  modem 
world  under  the  domination  of  science  finds  it  im- 
possible to  understand,  much  less  to  beHeve.  The 
difficulty  here  does  not  spring  from  the  details  of 
rehgious  instruction.  It  inheres  in  the  point  of  view 
itself.  To  Paul  and  the  other  writers  of  the  New 
Testament  the  earth  was  flat  with  a  series  of  heavens 
above  and  a  great  pit  for  the  dead  beneath;  the 
relations  of  man  and  God  were  those  of  the  rela- 
tions of  the  subject  of  an  oriental  monarchy  to  his 
king  or  of  the  subject  of  the  Roman  Empire  to  the 
emperor;  sin  was  statutory,  punishment  was  a 
matter  of  penalty,  and  justification  was  primarily  a 
matter  of  acquittal  at  the  world  judgment.  For 
those  who  think  of  men's  relations  to  God  in  such  a 
way,  Paulinism  and  the  theologies  which  have  been 


THE   CHURCH   AND   SCHOLABSHIP  1 7 

based  upon  it  present  no  fundamental  difficulty. 
But  for  men  who  think  of  God  as  dynamically  im- 
manent in  an  infinite  universe,  who  think  of  man's 
relation  to  him  as  determined  not  by  statutory  but 
by  cosmic  law,  who  regard  sin  and  righteousness 
alike  as  the  working  out  of  the  fundamental  forces 
of  life  itself,  the  conception  of  God  as  king  and  of 
man  as  a  condemned  or  acquitted  subject,  is  but  a 
figure  of  speech  expressing  an  actual  fact  far  more 
profound  than  the  figure  itself.  When,  therefore,  the 
church  insists  that  in  order  to  become  one  of  its 
members  one  must  assent  to  a  series  of  doctrines 
embodying  the  cosmology,  the  psychology,  and  the 
philosophy  of  the  New  Testament  taken  literally,  it 
inevitably  sets  up  a  test  which  "will  compel  a  man 
imder  the  influence  of  to-day's  scholarship  to  abandon 
not  only  a  life  of  evil  thinking  and  of  evil  action,  but 
also  the  results  of  his  education.  The  church  in 
standing  uncompromisingly  by  anciently  formulated 
dogma  as  an  expression  of  the  facts  of  religion  as 
known  in  the  life  of  Jesus  and  in  human  experience 
is  also  standing  for  a  philosophical  world-view,  for 
scientific  conceptions,  and  for  a  religious  philosophy 
that  sprang  up  in  an  age  that  was  not  only  pre- 
scientific,  but  was  also  untouched  by  the  modem 
ideals  of  political  democracy  and  social  evolution. 


1 8   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

n 

The  extent  of  this  breach,  between  the  church  and 
scientific  scholarship,  will  be  apparent  to  any  one 
who  looks  at  the  facts. 

The  average  church  is  always  something  of  a 
spiritual  force  in  a  community.  Because  of  its  partici- 
pation in  large  missionary  movements  it  is  also  a 
champion  of  world-wide  sympathies.  Any  philan- 
thropic enterprise  can  count  upon  receiving  assistance 
and  cooperation  from  its  members.  Similarly  the 
church  is  one  of  the  educational  forces  of  the  com- 
munity in  that  it  statedly  compels  a  group  of  men 
and  women  to  give  at  least  superficial  attention  to 
important  subjects  which  lie  outside  the  realm  of 
their  ordinary  interests.  The  man  who  belittles  the 
significance  of  the  church  in  society  is  behttling  his 
own  power  of  observation. 

But  this  is  by  no  means  to  state  the  entire  situa- 
tion. Although  the  rank  and  file  of  the  church  mem- 
bership come  into  touch  only  indirectly  with  the 
great  currents  of  thought,  their  economic  and  poHtical 
life  is  being  set  by  new  ideals.  With  these  new 
ideals  they  somehow  feel  that  their  religious  think- 
ing has  little  or  no  connection.  Because  of  a  great 
number  of  reasons  their  attitude  of  mind  relative 


THE  CHURCH   AND   SCHOLARSHIP  1 9 

to  doctrine  is  passive  rather  than  active.  They  test 
instruction  by  the  standards  which  they  have  agreed 
to  accept  as  true  without  serious  testing.  One 
might  ahnost  say  that  they  are  theological  alge- 
braists, who  once  given  their  x  and  y  are  able  to 
work  out  a  conclusion,  but  who  seldom  stop  to  ask 
what  reahty  x  and  y  represent. 

To  men  and  women  of  this  sort  the  world  owes 
an  incalculable  debt  as  the  champions  of  an  aggres- 
sive though  generally  individualistic  morality  and  of 
faith  in  the  eternal  worth  of  the  human  personahty. 
But  it  does  not  owe  them  any  large  debt  of  gratitude 
for  intellectual  leadership  in  reUgion.  The  mere 
fact  that  such  Christian  people  do  not  desire  too 
vigorous  thinking  in  the  realm  of  theology,  but  do 
enjoy  warm-hearted,  concrete,  uncritical  exposition 
of  accepted  doctrine,  is  an  evidence  that  they  do  not 
belong  to  the  formative  intellectual  group.  Yet  it  is 
imperative  that  they  should  be  aUied  with  such  a 
group.  Otherwise  the  church  would  compel  its 
ministry  to  think  in  one  way  in  the  pulpit  and  an- 
other in  the  study. 

Just  at  present,  however,  the  situation  is  peculiarly 
difficult  because  of  the  attitude  of  the  churches 
toward  the  results  of  our  new  education.  The 
churches  number  among  their  members  few  of  the 


20   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

professional,  that  is  to  say  of  the  scientifically  trained, 
classes.  They  are  composed  very  largely  of  men 
and  women  who,  whatever  may  be  their  culture, 
are  not  college  bred.  It  is,  of  course,  to  be  expected 
that  the  great  majority  of  our  church  members  should 
come  from  just  such  classes  because  the  proportion 
of  college-bred  men  and  women  in  a  community  is 
small.  But  what  becomes  of  the  thousands  of  young 
Christians  whom  our  colleges  and  universities  report 
as  making  up  half  of  their  entire  enrolment?  A 
recent  census  taken  of  one  denomination  numbering 
between  twenty  and  thirty  thousand  communicants 
in  Chicago  showed  that,  except  in  two  or  three 
churches,  not  one  in  fifty  of  its  membership  was 
a  college  graduate. 

Our  college  men  and  women,  by  thousands  and 
tens  of  thousands,  are  coming  out  of  our  Christian 
homes,  are  being  educated  for  the  most  part  in 
institutions  founded  originally  by  Christian  men 
and  taught  by  Christian  men.  It  would  therefore 
naturally  be  expected  that  their  proportion  in  church- 
membership  rolls  would  be  constantly  increasing. 
Such  an  expectation  is  strengthened  by  the  other 
fact  that  in  any  great  city  the  professional  class  at 
large  is  steadily  growing.  Yet  the  facts  stand  as 
they  are. 


THE   CHURCH   AND   SCHOLARSHIP  21 

Are  we  then  educating  a  generation  away  from 
the  church?  If  we  are,  is  the  trouble  with  our 
educational  system  or  with  the  churches?  If  we 
are  not,  what  role  is  the  college  man  to  play  in  our 
church  hf e  ? 

There  are  two  forces  at  work  in  all  our  institu- 
tions where  anything  like  serious  academic  work  is 
being  carried  on,  each  disconcerting  to  the  faith 
with  which  a  large  majority  of  college  students 
come  to  our  colleges  and  imiversities.  These  two 
forces  are  the  spirit  of  investigation  and  the  denial 
of  all  dogmatic  authority  in  the  intellectual  realm. 
At  bottom,  however,  these  two  are  one. 

For  the  last  twenty  years  our  universities  have 
been  opposed  to  authority,  as  such,  in  science. 
Everything  has  become  an  open  question.  We  inves- 
tigate not  only  atoms  but  the  origin  of  morality  and 
the  history  of  the  idea  of  God.  Our  ethical  teachers 
will  not  listen  to  the  appeal  to  statutory  enactment 
as  a  basis  for  moral  sanctions,  and  our  teachers  of 
natural  science  either  deliberately  or  unconsciously 
impress  upon  their  students  that  that  can  only  safely 
be  called  knowledge  which  can  be  tested  by  orderly 
experiment.  Our  teachers  of  history  very  properly 
do  the  best  they  can  to  break  down  the  belief  that 
the  study  of  history  is  a  mere  matter  of  memorizing 


22   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

an  authoritative  text-book,  and  if  they  do  not  agree 
with  Napoleon's  famous  dictum  that  history  is  the 
lies  men  have  agreed  to  beheve,  show  their  classes 
the  diflSculty  which  inheres  in  the  valuation  of  the 
sources  of  our  knowledge  of  the  past.  Our  archae- 
ologists are  ranked  in  hostile  camps  on  almost  every 
known  discovery,  and  our  metaphysicians  are  in- 
creasingly teaching  us  that  the  only  things  we  can 
be  sure  of  are  relationships  and  our  stream  of 
consciousness. 

A  young  man  comes  into  this  atmosphere.  He  has 
been  taught  by  parent  and  pastor  and  Sunday-school 
teacher  that  the  Bible  is  the  inerrant,  authorita- 
tive word  of  God.  He  has  never  seriously  questioned 
the  basis  for  such  an  affirmation.  His  entire  reli- 
gious thought  has  been  grounded  upon  authority. 
In  his  Freshman  year  he  hears  echoes  of  discussions 
in  the  upper  classes  concerning  matters  which  he 
does  not  understand,  but  which  in  a  general  sort  of 
way  he  feels  are  incompatible  with  Christianity  as 
he  has  known  it.  By  the  time  he  reaches  his  Junior 
year  he  begins  to  feel  the  effect  of  the  general  in- 
vestigative if  not  the  sceptical  atmosphere  of  scholar- 
ship. Many  of  his  teachers  are  interested  in  religious 
life,  but  in  too  many  cases  the  men  whose  scholar- 
ship he  most  respects  are  either  unsympathetic  with 


THE   CHURCH   AND   SCHOLARSHIP  23 

the  church  or  are  merely  conventionally  religious. 
He  is  set  to  reading  books  in  which  religion  is 
handled  as  a  matter  for  investigation  or  in  which 
the  idea  of  nature  and  of  natural  law  apparently 
leaves  no  room  for  God  and  divine  love.  He  him- 
self begins  to  grow  investigative.  His  training  makes 
him  resolve  life  into  a  series  of  problems  each  de- 
manding an  answer  which  shall  rest  not  upon  the 
behef  or  the  opinion  of  some  man  or  group  of  men, 
but  upon  ponderable  evidence. 

Inevitably  his  religious  faith  becomes  unsettled. 
Perhaps  he  goes  in  his  distress  to  some  member  of 
the  faculty  or  to  some  more  advanced  student  for 
help.  He  is  very  probably  told  that  there  is  no 
necessary  contradiction  between  doubt  and  faith; 
that  doubt  very  often  is  the  beginning  of  faith.  But 
he  is  also  told  that  the  faith  which  brings  assurance 
is  not  to  be  based  upon  the  authority  of  any  book 
or  church,  but  upon  one's  own  experience  of  God. 
When  he  asks  what  this  experience  of  God  is,  he  is 
told  it  cannot  be  described  but  must  be  felt.  Taught 
thus  to  examine  his  own  consciousness  he  finds  that 
his  investigating  mood  attacks  the  very  citadel  which 
he  is  told  is  impregnable. 

Is  it  any  wonder  that  if  he  graduates  in  this  mood 
of  mind,  he  should  enter  business  life  feeling  that 


24   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

while  the  church  has  value  as  the  expression  of  one 
of  the  forces  of  social  control,  he  himself  cannot 
assent  to  its  doctrines;  that  he  should  hold  himself 
aloof  from  its  work  and  should  grow  indiflferent  to 
those  beliefs  with  which  he  began  his  educational 
career  ? 

Such  college  men  and  women  as  these  are  not 
in  the  churches.  Many  of  their  fellows  of  another 
tjrpe  are.  Possibly  this  second  group  outnumbers 
the  first.  But  it  is  far  more  than  a  matter  of  mere 
proportion:  it  is  one  of  attitude  of  mind.  There 
are  many  men  and  women  who  have  passed  through 
college  without  having  their  religious  thinking  in 
the  least  modified.  They  have  never  attempted  to 
correlate  what  they  have  learned  in  the  laboratory 
or  the  lecture  room  with  the  religious  teachings  to 
which  they  have  been  accustomed  and  which  they 
continue  to  hold.  In  their  college  days  they  have 
seen  men  and  women  attempt  such  correlations,  but 
such  persons  seem  to  have  "lost  their  faith."  For 
their  own  part  they  prefer  neither  to  think  deeply 
nor  to  question  authority.  They  thus  divorce  them- 
selves and  their  education  from  formative  influences, 
and  join  that  majority  of  the  workers  in  our  churches 
who  are  primarily  immersed  in  practical  affairs,  out 
of  sympathy  with  the  readaptation  of  evangelic  truth 


THE   CHURCH   AND   SCHOLARSHIP  25 

to  the  intellectual  forces  of  the  day,  preferring  to 
listen  to  preachers  who  have  been  trained  to  read 
Hebrew  but  who  cannot  read  the  signs  of  the  times. 

in 

But  we  have  by  no  means  faced  all  the  elements 
of  the  situation.  Despite  the  fact  that  the  church 
has  been  the  mother  of  colleges,  its  authorities  have 
generally  opposed  the  beginnings  of  any  scientific 
progress  which  threatened  their  own  teachings. 
The  modem  church  has  indeed  numbered  among 
its  members  such  men  as  Dana  and  Gray,  but  it  has 
fought  vigorously  and  sometimes  passionately  these 
men's  positions.  Particularly  has  this  been  true 
since  the  publication  of  Darwin's  "Origin  of 
Species."  All  readers  of  Huxley's  correspondence 
will  recall  the  struggle  into  which  that  militant  soul 
threw  himself  after  the  attack  made  upon  Mr. 
Darwin  by  the  ecclesiastical  authorities  of  England. 
No  one  would  for  a  moment  claim  that  the  temper 
of  those  whom  Professor  Huxley  represented  was 
that  of  meekness,  but  the  struggle  on  the  part  of 
science  was  one  for  very  existence. 

And  it  was  to  have  effects  we  have  not  yet  out- 
grown. The  chief  defenders  of  a  traditional  theology 
in  the  nineteenth  century  erected  a  distinct  issue 


26   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

between  the  teaching  of  the  church  and  the  teach- 
ing of  the  laboratory  and  refused  to  believe  that  a 
man  could  accept  the  doctrine  of  evolution  and  re- 
main a  Christian.  The  result  of  this  alternative  was 
unfortunate  to  all  concerned.  Men  took  the  clergy 
at  their  word  and  left  the  church.  Many  of  them 
went  much  farther  than  to  submit  to  excommunica- 
tion literal  or  figurative,  and  allowed  themselves  to 
be  swept  into  a  general  antagonism  not  only  to  the 
church  but  to  Christianity  itself. 

It  is  true  there  has  arisen  a  group  of  Christian 
evolutionists  who  endeavor  as  best  they  can  to  bring 
about  a  modus  vivendi  between  science  and  the 
gospel.  Such  men  constitute,  probably,  a  majority 
of  the  most  intelligent  members  of  our  churches; 
but  they  are  still  the  object  of  suspicion  and  of 
attack.  Certain  religious  teachers  are  devoting 
themselves  to  a  continuous  attack  upon  evolution 
as  one  of  the  great  enemies  of  Christianity,  and  as  a 
part  of  their  campaign  are  spreading  broadcast  the 
statement  that  it  has  collapsed.  The  effect  of  such 
propaganda  is  easily  imagined.  The  scientist  to 
whom  the  general  evolutionary  hypothesis  has  be- 
come all  but  an  axiom,  not  only  laughs  at  the  state- 
ments of  these  zealots,  but  finds  himself  perplexed 
when  judging  their  motives  and  standards  of  veracity. 


THE  CHURCH   AND   SCHOLARSHIP  27 

And  his  perplexity  is  increased  by  the  vocabulary  of 
those  who  in  the  name  of  Christianity  find  it  necessary 
to  oppose  the  findings  of  physical  science.  If  a  man 
is  to  be  called  an  infidel  because  he  believes  in 
natural  law,  the  outcome  of  such  a  classification 
may  easily  be  forecast.  Men  under  the  domination 
of  modem  science  —  and  this  number  includes  most 
professional  and  university-bred  men  —  will  no 
more  join  the  church  than  they  will  become  Chris- 
tian Scientists.  It  may  be  the  churches  do  not 
want  them.  At  any  rate,  they  do  not  have  them. 
As  a  consequence  there  is  an  alarming  danger  that 
the  church  will  have  small  influence  upon  lines  of 
thought  which  are  formative  in  to-day's  civilization. 
It  is  in  danger  of  losing  its  grip  on  the  educated 
classes.    Are  they,  then,  not  worth  saving  ? 

Fortunately  there  are  many  churches  whose 
pastors  and  whose  leading  laymen  do  not  share  in 
this  revival  of  emasculated  persecution.  But  if  one 
reads  the  average  denominational  paper  or  listens 
to  the  frequent  slurs  cast  upon  current  science  by 
speakers  at  religious  gatherings,  one  will  be  con- 
vinced that  the  rank  and  file  of  the  clergy  of  the 
evangelical  denominations  as  well  as  of  Roman 
Cathohcism  are  opposed  to  anything  like  a  conces- 
sion to  science.    To  be  known  as  an  evolutionist  is 


28   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

still  to  risk  condemnation  as  a  heretic.  It  is  not  so 
long  ago  that  the  trustees  of  a  certain  denomi- 
national college  had  difficulty  in  preventing  the  en- 
forced resignation  of  the  ablest  man  on  their  faculty 
because  some  of  the  reactionary  members  of  their 
board,  as  they  frankly  said,  thought  they  "  saw  the 
traces  of  a  monkey's  tail"  in  his  laboratory! 

The  greatest  formative  principle  in  the  world 
of  thought  to-day  is  biology.  And  biology  means 
evolution.  Modification  of  the  views  of  Darwin 
and  of  La  Place,  the  works  of  De  Vries  and  Weiss- 
mann,  have  not  changed  but  rather  have  strengthened 
the  fundamental  concept  of  evolution.  The  church 
must  either  fight  this  controlling  hypothesis  of  sci- 
ence or  use  it  completed  by  the  inclusion  of  Jesus, 
the  first-fruit  of  them  that  sleep,  as  one  element  of 
theology  and  of  popular  teaching. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  the  outcome  of  a  choice 
which  shall  exclude  men  touched  by  to-day's  philoso- 
phy and  science  will  be  the  ending  of  the  church. 
That  institution  will  undoubtedly  continue  to  exist ; 
it  may  even  grow  in  numbers;  it  will  undoubtedly 
do  good.  What  I  would  emphasize  with  all  the 
strength  at  my  command  is  that  by  such  a  choice 
the  church  is  cutting  itself  off  from  cooperation  with 
the  controlling  intellectual  force  of  to-day  and  is 


THE   CHURCH   AND   SCHOLARSHH*  29 

making  it  certain  that  in  the  future  it  will  embrace 
only  by  suffrance,  if  at  all,  the  intellectual  leaders  of 
society;  that  it  consequently  will  be  composed  ex- 
clusively of  those  who,  however  able  as  business 
men  and  above  reproach  as  individuals,  are  not  the 
moulders  of  public  opinion  or  the  makers  of  the 
new  age. 
The  church  will  live  —  but  what  sort  of  church  ? 

IV 

The  position  of  the  church  relative  to  the  exten- 
sion of  scientific  methods  in  the  study  of  the  Bible 
is  similar  to  that  forced  upon  it  in  the  case  of  physi- 
cal science.  It  stands  at  the  cross-roads.  It  may 
fight  or  use  and  hallow  scholarship. 

The  rise  of  higher  criticism  and  its  adoption  by 
practically  every  biblical  teacher  of  scholarly  sig- 
nificance in  the  world  is  one  of  the  most  striking 
characteristics  of  to-day's  religious  life.  He  would 
be  a  rash  man  who  would  insist  that  the  current 
schools  of  criticism  have  reached  final  results,  and 
he  would  be  even  rasher  who  would  insist  that  the 
philosophy  which  lies  back  of  much  of  the  literary 
criticism  is  in  itself  a  criterion  warranted  to  give 
final  results.  But  the  question  is  more  vital  than 
one  of  this  or  that  school  of  criticism.    It  is  rather 


3©   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

whether  there  shall  be  within  the  church  any  his- 
torical study  of  the  Scripture  whatsoever.  As  in  the 
case  of  the  evolutionist,  the  higher  critic  is  being 
read  out  of  not  a  few  churches,  and  in  many  cases 
out  of  his  professional  position.  So-called  religious 
papers  have  exhausted  the  vocabulary  of  invectives 
and  of  prejudice  in  their  description  of  his  infidehty. 
Various  organizations  are  insisting  that  a  denial  of  a 
traditional  theory  of  inspiration  means  the  denial  of 
a  divine  Saviour. 

Literary  critics  may  not  have  given  proper  weight 
to  archaeology;  they  do  not  themselves  agree.  But 
they  do  agree  as  to  method.  Their  very  disagree- 
ment leads  to  mutual  correction  and  so  to  large 
confidence  in  the  wisdom  of  giving  free  hand  to  in- 
vestigation. The  issue  is  not  one  of  this  or  that 
result  or  opinion;  it  is  one  of  attitude  toward  the 
Bible. 

It  is  true  the  situation  is  not  that  of  twenty  years 
ago.  The  number  of  earnest  religious  teachers  who 
have  accepted  the  critics'  positions  is  now  very 
numerous,  and,  despite  the  assertions  to  the  con- 
trary, their  influence  can  be  shown  by  statistics  to 
be  anything  but  destructive  to  the  churches.  But 
these  very  facts  seem  to  result  in  a  more  vigorous 
propaganda  against  criticism  and  a  more  vigorous 


THE  CHURCH   AND   SCHOLARSHIP  3 1 

appeal  to  the  doctrine  of  an  infallible  and  inerrant 
Scripture.  Thus  there  is  forced  upon  the  church 
an  issue  of  profound  import.  For  to  exclude  the 
higher  critic  is  practically  to  exclude  biblical  schol- 
arship. 

Is  the  church  ready  to  take  such  a  step?  Or 
shall  investigation  be  given  a  free  but  reverent 
hand? 

This  simple  alternative  has  been  generally  obscured 
whenever  a  reasonable  freedom  of  teaching  has  been 
denied  religious  teachers.  Men  have  been  removed 
from  their  positions  in  theological  seminaries,  and 
in  justification  of  such  action  it  has  been  said  that 
they  were  not  removed  because  of  their  views  but 
because  of  their  insistence  upon  their  views  and  be- 
cause of  their  lack  of  tact.  Such  excuses  are  dan- 
gerously near  hypocrisy.  The  only  justification  that 
persecution  can  claim  is  passionate  loyalty  to  truth. 
Better   such    intolerant    loyalty   than   euphemistic 

hypocrisy ! 

V 

Herein  lies  another  danger  for  the  church.  To 
divorce  itself  from  sympathy  and  cooperation  with 
the  intellectual  forces  of  the  times  means  schism  in 
our  Christian  forces.  This  is  bad  enough,  but  for 
an  institution  like  the  church  there  is  something 


32   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

vastly  more  serious  —  the  development  of  a  spirit 
of  intolerance. 

Let  the  man  without  sin  of  this  sort  cast  the  first 
stone ! 

For  the  sake  of  argument  let  us  grant  that  the 
group  of  clergymen  and  laymen  who  administer  the 
affairs  of  a  college  or  seminary  have  a  perfect  right 
to  say  what  shall  be  taught  in  every  department  from 
mathematics  to  theology.  Let  us  admit  that  they 
even  have  a  right  to  duplicate  the  action  of  the 
trustees  of  a  certain  denominational  college  and 
drop  a  highly  effective  teacher  of  science  because  of 
his  too  liberal  utterances  in  his  Sunday-school  class. 
But  even  after  we  have  made  this  concession  of  sup- 
posable  rights,  there  would  still  remain  the  danger 
that  a  church  thus  attempting  to  suppress  investiga- 
tion in  the  interest  of  its  own  dogmas,  would  grow 
un-Christlike. 

But  the  champion  of  tolerance  may  himself  grow 
intolerant  of  intolerance.  Liberalism  has  its  dog- 
matism as  real  as  that  of  traditionaUsm,  and  often 
more  arrogant.  Its  weapons  are  scorn  and  con- 
tempt. The  sin  that  so  easily  besets  it  is  impatience 
of  criticism  and  opposition.  It  is  hard  for  any  of 
us  to  take  our  place  by  the  side  of  the  publican 
and  not  find  ourselves  edging  over  toward   where 


THE  CHURCH   AND  SCHOLARSHIP  33 

the  Pharisee  stands  shouting  his  self-congratulatory 
prayer. 

Shall  we  never  leam  the  catholicity  of  our  Master 
with  his  sheep  of  other  folds  ? 

Appeal  to  prejudice  which  has  been  deepened  by 
misinterpretation  will  never  establish  the  truth  of 
any  position,  be  it  conservative  or  be  it  liberal.  It 
can  do  nothing  but  lose  the  church  the  respect  of 
men  it  should  save.  Intolerance  as  truly  as  in- 
difference costs  human  souls.  A  disregard  of  the 
new  conditions  in  which  the  church  finds  itself  can 
do  nothing  else  but  what  in  certain  religious  bodies 
it  has  already  done  —  make  the  church  a  group  of 
men  and  women  opposed  to  intellectual  progress  on 
the  one  side  and  opposed  to  the  extension  of  economic 
privileges  on  the  other.  But  the  spirit  of  academic 
arrogance  will  cost  it  quite  as  truly  the  power  of 
love.  And  this  also  means  decay.  Knowledge  puffs 
up.    It  is  love  that  builds  up. 

It  is  no  tune  for  schism.  Why  should  the  divi- 
sion now  threatening  be  allowed  to  proceed  further  ? 
Why  should  misunderstanding  and  misinterpreta- 
tion be  suffered  to  exist?  As  the  fine  old  version 
has  it,  the  servant  of  Jesus  "should  not  strive."  No 
scholarship  or  hatred  of  scholarship  should  be 
allowed  to  redenominationalize  a  Protestantism  that 


34   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

has  begun  to  experience  the  joys  and  the  efl&ciency 
of  Christian  union.  The  new  evangelicalism  is  as 
passionately  devoted  to  saving  men  and  society  as  is 
the  old;  the  older  evangelicalism  is  as  passionately 
devoted  to  Jesus  Christ  as  is  the  new.  Let  them 
cease  to  combat  each  other,  and  like  Peter  and 
Paul  preach  the  same  eternal  gospel  to  men  of 
different  conditions  and  acquirements,  and  thus  like 
the  apostles  leaven  a  changing  order. 

VI 

For  we  are  in  a  fashion  repeating  the  story  of  the 
Jewish  and  the  Gentile  churches.  Men  fall  into 
different  theological  classes  as  they  are  under  the 
influence  of  different  intellectual  habits  and  sym- 
pathies. Each  class  is  worth  saving,  but  to  save  all, 
the  gospel,  as  at  Pentecost,  must  be  preached  to 
each  man  in  his  own  tongue. 

The  imperative  demand  for  reconstruction  is  not 
the  outgrowth  of  wanton  theological  agitation,  but 
of  the  pressure  brought  upon  the  church  by  the 
world  of  scholarship  itself.  Thought  like  business 
is  a  creature  of  new  methods.  We  have  a  new  psy- 
chology, a  new  metaphysics,  a  new  biology,  a  new 
sociology.  It  is  inevitable  that  there  should  be  a 
call  for  a  new  theology.    Yet  this  is  not  to  say  that 


THE   CHURCH   AND   SCHOLARSHIP  35 

there  is  need  of  a  new  gospel.  The  "modem  man" 
needs  the  "old  gospel"  as  truly  as  the  man  who 
never  heard  of  Darwin  or  Wellhausen.  New  sciences 
deal  with  old  realities,  —  man,  being,  Hfe,  society. 
Similarly  a  new  theology  must  be  old  in  that  it  deals 
with  data  that  it  inherits  from  Jesus  and  the  church, 
but  which  it  interprets  to  a  world  that  is  thinking  in 
its  own  new  fashion. 

In  this  process  of  reinterpreting  the  gospel  in  the 
interest  of  world-wide,  rational  evangelism  and  social 
service  the  new  scholarship  can  be  of  vast  assistance 
to  the  church.  The  nearer  every  science  comes  to 
an  exposition  of  its  subject,  the  more  rational  and 
attractive  does  the  real  gospel  appear.  For  the 
church  to  put  to  service  the  mass  of  knowledge 
and  the  more  precise  methods  which  scholarship  is 
placing  at  its  disposal,  is  to  insure  that  it  shall  be 
ever  more  socially  effective. 

As  the  Magi  brought  gifts  to  the  infant  Christ,  so 
scholarship  is  bearing  gifts  to  the  church  of  Christ. 
The  psychology  that  insists  upon  the  unity  of  the 
self  is  vastly  nearer  a  gospel  that  insists  upon  the 
body  of  the  resurrection,  the  fruit  of  a  transformed 
personality,  than  were  the  old  trichotomous  and 
faculty  psychologies.  We  understand  God  better 
when  we  recall  that  there  is  no  separating  between 


36   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

will  and  thought  and  love.  Evolution  helps  to  an 
understanding  of  the  divine  purpose  of  salvation 
and  almost  startlingly  gives  a  setting  for  the  study 
of  the  significance  of  Jesus  and  the  atonement. 
Biology,  astronomy,  and  physics  help  us  to  appre- 
ciate the  God  of  law  and  the  law  of  God  as  could 
no  analogy  drawn  from  the  world  of  politics.  Philoso- 
phy helps  us  to  an  understanding  of  personality  and 
the  Absolute  which  excludes  deism  and  places  the 
church  in  a  position  to  combat  as  never  before  a 
persistent  and  deadly  materialism.  History,  politics, 
economics,  and  sociology  show  us  the  ever  growing 
horizon  of  human  solidarity  and  possibilities  and 
help  us  to  a  better  understanding  of  the  redemptive 
work  of  Jesus. 

With  such  allies  the  church  may  as  confidently 
expect  to  influence  a  changing  order  to-day  as  it  has 
influenced  it  in  the  past.  Without  such  allies  it  can 
only  expect  a  diminution  of  such  control  as  it  now 
exerts. 

It  is  because  I  honor  the  church  of  Christ  enough 
to  believe  that  it  can  never  become  an  agency  of  re- 
action and  obscurantism  that  I  dare  to  state  the 
issue  frankly.  From  the  days  of  the  Montanist  to 
the  day  of  the  premillenarian  there  have  always  been 
those  who  have  attempted  to  reproduce  in  religious 


THE  CHURCH   AND   SCHOLARSHIP  37 

thought  a  theology  bom  of  an  unhistorical,  indis- 
criminating,  literalistic  interpretation  of  the  Scripture. 
But  in  the  same  proportion  as  literalism  in  the  use 
of  the  Scriptures  and  subserviency  to  ecclesiastical 
dogmas  have  been  dominant  in  religious  thought, 
has  the  church  grown  less  influential  in  the  shap- 
ing of  the  intellectual  ideals  which  condition  true 
progress.  To  perpetuate  such  literalism  would 
mean  that  the  scientific  world  would  be  increasingly 
removed  from  the  inspiration  of  the  ideals  of  our 
Christ,  and  that  the  Christian  world  would  be  de- 
creasingly  influential  over  those  men  and  women 
who  are  shaping  the  intellectual  future.  Who  dares 
forecast  the  outcome?  Why  should  those  whom 
God  would  put  together  be  kept  apart? 

VII 

For  scholarship  is  not  the  highest  thing  in  life. 
Above  it  are  culture  and  the  eternal  life  of  the  spirit. 
And  culture  and  eternal  life  are  not  enemies,  al- 
though too  often  between  them,  as  between  scholar- 
ship and  dogma,  there  blazes  forth  hostility.  On 
the  part  of  many  of  the  modem  Hellenistic  disciples 
of  sweetness  and  light  there  is  conscious  contempt 
for  the  Hebraism  of  the  masses.  To  them  preach- 
ing is  provincialism,  hymn-singing  is  nasal  psalmody, 


38   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

and  the  prayer-meeting  is  an  opportunity  for  the  dis- 
play of  unhealthy  introspection.  At  the  same  time, 
earnest  teachers  of  religion,  in  their  emphasis  of  the 
divine  elements  in  life,  have  minimized  and  an- 
tagonized the  intellectual  and  aesthetic  movements 
of  our  time,  continually  telling  us  that  culture  can- 
not save. 

This  divorce  is  not  inexplicable.  On  the  side  of 
religion  there  has  often  been  since  the  days  of  the 
Puritans  a  one-sidedness  in  religious  development, 
a  lingering  behef  in  the  moral  efficacy  of  asceticism, 
and  too  often  a  systematic  decrying  of  an  educated 
ministry.  To  this  must  be  added  the  suspicion 
aroused  by  the  very  methods  which  have  given  suc- 
cess in  work  among  the  masses,  —  methods  which 
have  been  the  natural  servants  of  enthusiasm  and 
excitement,  and  which  too  often  have  made  religion 
an  affair  of  the  housetops  rather  than  of  the  bolted 
closet. 

On  the  other  hand  some  of  the  chief  representa- 
tives of  culture  have  unnecessarily  adopted  a  hostile 
attitude  toward  popular  religion.  Preferring  the 
position  of  critics  to  that  of  co-workers,  they  have 
sought  to  clarify  dogmas  without  according  them  a 
sufl&ciently  gentle  treatment.  Magnifying  the  crudi- 
ties and  monstrosities  of  religious  beliefs  hallowed 


THE  CHURCH   AND   SCHOLARSHIP  39 

through  generations,  they  have  overlooked,  or 
examined  but  scantily,  the  profound  moral  impulse 
and  magnificent  faith  that  have  accompanied  un- 
couth words  and  acts.  Gaining  religious  emotion 
through  the  sphere  of  the  aesthetic,  they  have  wor- 
shipped God  in  the  cathedral,  but  have  questioned 
the  genuineness  of  the  worship  in  the  chapel.  Be- 
lieving profoundly  in  a  God,  they  find  themselves 
averse  to  definition  or  to  the  sHghtest  approach  to 
anthropomorphic  conceptions.  In  too  many  cases, 
it  must  be  added,  has  this  reverence  for  infinity  given 
way  to  an  agnosticism  which  can  see  in  the  positive 
preaching  of  Christian  truth  only  cant  or  wilful 
deception. 

He  who  would  see  the  real  meaning  of  human 
progress  can  be  content  with  no  such  superficial 
views  as  these.  Faith  and  culture  are  not  exclusive 
terms.  The  possibility  of  a  religious  culture  and  of 
a  cultured  religion  grows  more  evident  as  we  probe 
each  to  its  essential  element.  Culture  at  its  heart  is 
a  form  of  faith;  and  the  fruit  of  faith  is  a  form  of 
culture.  He  who  ingenuously  seeks  culture,  attempts 
to  raise  the  highest  instincts  and  sympathies  into 
dominion  over  those  that  are  merely  commercial  or 
workaday.  The  poet,  not  content  with  the  sight 
of  external  nature,  finds  beauty  in  that  which  to 


40   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

the  mere  farmer  is  potential  milk  or  butter.  The 
sculptor  seeks  to  catch  in  stone  some  unnoticed 
grace  of  the  human  form.  The  architect  expresses 
with  the  exactness  of  mathematics  and  with  the  aid 
of  otherwise  unshaped  masses  of  material  some- 
thing of  the  creative  idea.  The  musician,  rising 
above  the  limitations  of  all  senses  but  one,  appeals 
to  man's  deepest  sense  of  harmony  and  rhythm. 

In  all  of  these  attempts  to  suggest  through  one 
sense  the  deliverances  of  others,  men  are  always 
passing  from  that  which  can  be  weighed  and  meas- 
ured to  that  which  must  be  first  ideal.  He  who 
would  appreciate  the  work  of  the  artist  must  himself 
cultivate  that  which  is  the  glory  of  art,  —  the  seeing 
of  the  invisible.  The  uncultured  man  sees  in  a 
Greek  urn  a  mere  mass  of  clay  singularly  preserved 
through  the  centuries,  but  worthless.  The  Philistine 
who  trudges  through  life  with  the  heavy  tread  of  one 
of  his  own  fat  dray  horses  demands  that  a  thing  be 
useful  before  he  allows  it  room  to  live.  The  man 
of  culture,  while  not  disregarding  those  things  that 
make  for  common  use,  yet  sees  in  things  of  beauty 
something  more  than  agents  of  production. 

The  mere  acquisition  of  knowledge  is  not  culture. 
The  professional  scholar  too  often  finds  in  learning 
nothing  but  the  weapon  for  his  conflict  with  circum- 


THE   CHURCH   AND  SCHOLARSHIP  41 

stances.  Too  often  must  we  admit  that  losing  its 
higher  aim,  education  itself  becomes  the  servant  of 
mediocrity.  Who  has  not  met  the  loud- talking,  ill- 
dressed  man  who  boasts  of  his  learning  while  he 
bolts  his  food?  Education  that  does  not  change 
the  fibre  of  a  man's  character,  that  does  not  awaken 
some  love  of  that  which  is  truly  beautiful,  that  does 
not  make  a  man  into  a  gentleman,  makes  vulgarity 
doubly  vulgar. 

Nor  is  culture  a  mere  veneer  of  absent-minded 
interest  in  things  we  have  been  told  should  interest 
us.  To  talk  readily  at  a  reception  about  the  latest 
novel;  to  parade  a  smattering  of  Greek  or  Latin  or 
politics;  to  know  when  to  leave  one  visiting  card 
and  when  two;  to  be  able  to  tell  without  the  aid  of 
a  clock  when  a  call  has  reached  its  end;  to  be  in- 
discriminately interested  in  pictures,  gowns,  music, 
University  Settlements,  and  all  other  good  works : 
this  is  not  culture.  But  to  seek  to  train  the  deepest 
sympathies  of  one's  life;  to  choose  that  which  is 
noble  and  that  which  is  beautiful ;  to  leam  to  despise 
cynicism  and  to  believe  that  the  world  is  the  abode 
of  purity  and  goodness  as  well  as  of  evil;  to  study 
with  such  sincerity  that  smug  respectability  be  felt 
unworthy  a  struggle;  to  feel  in  life  the  upspringing 
of  loftier  ambitions  and  sympathies;  to  be  ready  to 


42   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

stake  one's  life  that  truth  is  more  than  victory,  be 
the  triumphal  procession  never  so  long,  in  a  word, 
to  transmute  knowledge  into  love :  this  is  culture. 

With  such  high  purposes  as  these  religious  faith 
has  much  in  common.  It,  too,  seeks  to  apprehend 
that  which  eye  has  not  seen,  but  which  yet  is  real. 
It,  too,  endeavors  to  appropriate  the  world  of  beauty 
and  harmony  that  lies  within  the  nearer  and  dustier 
world  of  everyday  life.  But  it  does  more.  It 
knows  that  this  world  of  beauty  and  goodness  exists. 
It  stretches  out  its  hands  to  that  which  will  not 
delude.  It  knows  that  so  long  as  personality  rules 
in  the  world  we  can  feel,  so  long  must  it  rule  through- 
out unending  caverns  of  space.  Without  stopping 
to  demonstrate  the  ground  of  this  confidence  —  for 
faith  that  turns  upon  itseK  and  demands  proof  is 
not  faith  —  it  has  assimilated  the  eternal  verities  of 
an  all-embracing  personality  as  instinctively  and  as 
confidently  as  ever  musician  trusted  the  harmonies 
he  so  imperfectly  reproduced,  or  artist  the  bright 
ideal  his  chisel  so  often  marred. 

But  the  faith  of  religion  is  nobler  than  the  faith  of 
culture.  Its  sympathies  are  more  subtle  and  tender 
and  dynamic.  There  is  more  moral  impulse  in  a 
belief  in  a  God  than  in  a  belief  in  ideal  beauty. 
From  the  days  of  beauty-mad  Greece,  culture  has 


THE   CHURCH   AND   SCHOLARSHIP  43 

proved  insufficient  to  preserve  a  nation  that  has  lost 
its  faith  in  God.  He  who  enters  the  world  of  ethics 
through  the  gateway  of  mere  asstheticism,  finds  the 
sharp  drawing  of  moral  distinctions  replaced  by  the 
uncertain  coloring  of  sympathy  and  has  little  con- 
tribution to  make  to  the  world's  teaching  except  an 
optimism  as  irrational  as  that  of  Mrs.  Eddy. 

It  is  just  here  where  faith  is  strongest  that  culture 
is  weakest.  It  can  furnish  ideals;  it  too  often  fails 
to  furnish  motives.  Notwithstanding  its  noble  ideals, 
a  culture  not  impregnated  with  a  living  faith  in  God 
tends  toward  finical  criticism,  jealousy,  selfishness, 
and  cynicism.  And  even  if  these  be  not  reached, 
culture  is  always  in  danger  of  pushing  its  devotees 
into  a  dilettante  pedantry,  or  into  a  worship  in  which 
profound  trust  in  a  Heavenly  Father  is  replaced  by 
conventional  genuflections.  Diogenes  was  no  more 
real  than  the  character  in  "The  Portrait  of  a  Lady" 
who  was  a  paragon  of  good  manners,  of  devotion  to 
painted  crockery,  and  of  selfishness. 

And  the  reason  why  this  tendency  toward  the 
trivial  so  pursues  that  which  plans  so  nobly,  is  not 
far  to  seek.  Culture  apart  from  faith  is  mutilated 
—  its  ideal,  be  it  never  so  godlike,  is  but  a  torso. 
Man's  soul  that  cries  out  for  God,  starves  when  it  is 
given  only  a  painting  or  a  song. 


44   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

It  is  one  of  the  astonishing  things,  this  indifference 
of  so  much  education  to  man's  religious  nature.  It 
would  sometimes  appear  as  if  men  believed  their 
religious  natures  were  not  worth  attention.  We  with 
our  gymnasiums  and  baths  and  games  and  muscular 
Christianity  are  never  done  sneering  at  the  ghostly 
scholar  of  the  Middle  Ages.  And  an  Abelard  or  a 
Thomas  might  turn  upon  us  and  ask  why  our  learn- 
ing is  the  servant  of  business,  and  our  scholarship 
of  trade;  why  theology  and  metaphysics  give  way 
before  the  bustle  of  so-called  practical  study ;  why  we 
have  fewer  kings  among  our  clergy ;  why  reverence 
flees  before  flippancy ;  why  when  men's  bodies  have 
been  growing  sleek,  their  spirits  have  been  growing 
lean. 

There  never  was  greater  need  than  now  for  the 
culture  of  that  power  which  is  as  truly  human  as  the 
power  to  add  or  subtract  —  the  power  of  serving 
God.  When  culture  is  seen  to  be  incomplete  until 
it  embraces  religion,  when  a  man  will  not  be  con- 
sidered educated  who  has  no  sympathies  with  right 
and  God  —  when  this  time  comes,  and  not  till  then, 
will  the  genuine  aim  of  culture  be  realized.  When 
that  day  shall  have  come  we  shall  hear  no  more 
sneers  at  vulgar  and  narrow  rehgion,  and  no  more 
warnings  against  the    pretensions  of  an  overripe 


THE  CHURCH   AND   SCHOLARSHIP  45 

intellectualism.  For  they  two,  faith  and  culture, 
shall  be  one,  and  every  disciple  of  the  beautiful  and 
gentle  will  grow  more  evidently  into  the  virile  like- 
ness of  the  Man  Christ  Jesus,  and  more  avowedly 
devoted  to  the  evangelization  of  a  world  of  sin. 

But  to  bring  about  this  union  it  is  not  enough 
that  culture  alone  should  reaUze  its  deepest  mission. 
Faith  must  be  set  forth  in  its  own  might  and  beauty 
and  universality.  We  know  to-day  better  than  we 
knew  twenty-five  years  ago  that  religion  is  something 
grander  than  a  single  cult,  and  that  the  faith  of  the 
Christian  is  neither  a  logical  formula  nor  a  spasm 
of  a  troubled  conscience.  The  thinking  of  the 
world  may  not  confirm  every  teaching  we  have  in- 
herited from  the  past,  but  it  is  doing  something 
vastly  more  important.  It  is  sa)dng  to  him  who 
seeks  the  highest  possible  development:  "If  you 
will  be  perfect,  you  must  be  true  to  all  sides  of  your 
nature,  and  above  all  your  religious  nature.  'The 
fear  of  the  Lord  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom.'"  To 
the  church  is  given  the  opportunity  of  showing  that 
faith  may  be  intense  and  philanthropic,  and  never 
commonplace;  of  reinstating  religion  as  a  natural 
part  of  man's  spiritual  life ;  of  educating  men  in  the 
ways  of  social  righteousness. 

Not  by  belittling  culture,  but  by  invigorating  it 


46   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

with  the  Spirit  of  Christ;  not  by  forcing  cultured 
men  to  accept  the  religious  forms  and  experiences  of 
ignorant  men,  will  this  be  accomplished;  but  by 
holding  up  the  faith  of  Christ  as  the  indispensable 
prerequisite  of  culture;  by  welcoming  every  new 
truth;  by  emphasizing  the  social  content  of  the 
gospel,  and  by  urging  the  appropriation  of  every- 
thing new  that  is  true  and  noble,  until  it  shall  ap- 
pear that  faith  in  Christ  which  seizes  hold  upon 
eternal  life  is  also  but  a  synonym  for  all  that  is 
beautiful  and  manly  and  divine. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  GOSPEL  OF  THE  RISEN 
CHRIST 

If  there  is  danger  that  the  church  shall  become 
indifferent  to  scholarly  procedure,  there  is  also 
already  discernible  a  danger  that,  in  the  persons  of 
some  of  its  more  "modern"  representatives,  it  shall 
mistake  negation  for  scholarship  and  dubiety  for 
illumination.  Particularly  is  this  true  in  the  region 
of  the  strictly  evangelical  message.  Many  a  pro- 
gressive teacher  or  preacher  judges  that  he  is  in 
sympathy  with  his  age  when  he  magnifies  the  un- 
certainties and  doubts  which  scholarship  suggests. 
Just  as  we  are  apt  to  think  a  man  is  scientific  if  his 
writings  are  uninteresting  are  some  of  us  tempted 
to  think  that  a  man  is  liberal  if  he  abounds  in  doubts. 

Nothing  could  be  more  fatal  to  the  progress  of  the 
church  than  to  call  the  attitude  of  denial,  tolerance. 
Tolerance  is  not  even  indifference.  Better  a  per- 
secutor with  conviction  than  an  indifferent  agnostic. 
One  needs  to  believe  something  to  be  genuinely 
tolerant  of  the  beliefs  of  others.  The  church  needs 
just  now  an  emphasis  upon  truth  rather  than  a  re- 
y       47 


48   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

duction  in  the  quantity  of  truth.  To  judge  from  the 
past,  if  it  is  to  fulfil  its  appointed  function,  the 
church  must  devote  itself  whole-heartedly  to  its 
peculiar  mission  of  socializing  the  gospel.  Therein 
lies  the  truth  of  that  exhortation  so  often  misinter- 
preted, "Preach  the  old  gospel."  Philosophy  has 
appealed  only  to  a  select  few  and  in  their  case  has 
not  always  proved  itself  possessed  of  the  power  of 
moral  control.  That  which  the  world  needs  is  not 
a  speculative  or  even  a  polemic  theism,  but  the 
gospel.  For  the  gospel  includes  all  that  is  philo- 
sophically and  scientifically  valuable  in  theism  and 
in  addition  adds  positive  historical  elements  on  which 
one  may  base  a  more  lively  hope  of  immortality  and 
a  more  satisfying  faith  in  the  goodness  of  the  Father 
of  the  Universe. 

Yet  it  is  just  at  this  point  that  religious  teachers 
of  more  liberal  s)mipathies  are  exposed  to  tempta- 
tions. In  their  ranks  there  is  a  tendency  to  reduce 
the  gospel  to  ethics  and  to  take  from  it  that  insistence 
upon  immortality  which  has  been  one  source  of  its 
power.  If  the  ultraconservative  wing  of  the  church 
is  in  danger  of  neglecting  the  formative  intellectual 
forces  of  the  time,  the  liberal  wing  is  quite  as  much 
in  danger  of  forgetting  that  it  has  a  gospel  of  facts 
and  hope. 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  GOSPEL       49 


What  is  the  gospel? 

It  is  certainly  not  a  general  philosophy  of  conduct. 
The  moral  ideal  contained  in  the  New  Testament  is 
hardly  in  itself  good  news.  It  involves  too  many 
responsibilities.  You  look  to  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  for  ideals,  but  you  do  not  look  to  it  for  power 
to  help  realize  those  ideals. 

The  gospel  is  not  a  philosophy  of  the  universe,  or 
even  a  philosophy  of  the  divine  love  implied  in  the 
progress  of  the  race. 

I.  In  its  New  Testament  sense  there  can  be  no 
question  that  the  gospel  is  the  good  news  concern- 
ing the  kingdom  of  God.  That  was  the  precise 
definition  given  it  by  Jesus  when  he  came  into  Galilee 
preaching  that  the  kingdom  of  God  was  at  hand, 
and  urging  people  to  believe  the  "good  news." 
To  enter  this  kingdom  was  to  save  one's  life.  In 
the  course  of  time  the  word  gained  a  richer  content, 
but  its  root  idea  remained  steadily  the  same.  It  was 
the  good  news  as  to  the  possibility  of  salvation  from 
sin  and  death,  through  that  regenerating  union  with 
God  revealed  and  set  forth  in  the  cardinal  facts  of 
the  life,  death,  and  resurrection  of  Jesus  the  Christ. 

Let  us  briefly  formulate  this  original  content  with 


50   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

some  precision.  The  gospel  as  preached  by  the 
apostles  involved  the  following  statements  of  fact : — 

(a)  The  "last  days"  have  begun;  the  kingdom  of 
God  is  presently  to  appear. 

(6)  The  Christ  has  already  appeared  in  the  person 
of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  who  was  killed  at  the  instiga- 
tion of  the  Jews,  but  who  exhibited  his  Messiahship 
in  his  resurrection. 

(c)  The  Christ  has  returned  to  heaven,  whence  he 
will  come  to  establish  the  great  judgment  and  to 
introduce  his  kingdom. 

(d)  To  believe  in  Jesus  as  this  Christ  is  to  insure 
forgiveness  and  reconciliation  with  God,  acquittal 
at  the  judgment,  admission  into  the  kingdom  of 
God,  a  share  in  its  blessings,  and  in  particular,  the 
redemption  of  the  body,  i.e.  its  resurrection. 

(e)  As  the  first  instalment  of  this  blessed  heritage 
the  believer  has  received  the  Spirit  of  God. 

When  these  constituent  elements  of  the  gospel 
were  brought  into  connection  with  the  religious 
philosophy,  if  one  may  use  the  term,  of  Paul,  they 
helped  solve  certain  of  the  fundamental  questions 
of  religion. 

In  the  first  place  the  question,  so  difficult  for  any 
Jew,  as  to  how  a  God  of  law  could  forgive  a  man 
who,  wittingly  or  unwittingly,  had  broken  the  law, 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  GOSPEL       5 1 

was  answered  by  saying  that  the  death  of  Christ 
had  met  the  requirements  of  law  and  so  set  God 
right  in  the  eyes  of  those  who  otherwise  might  cavil 
at  His  indifference  to  sin.  In  a  sense  which  the 
apostle  never  precisely  elaborated,  Jesus  had  died 
for  the  world. 

Then,  too,  the  moral  problem  as  to  why  a  man  who 
is  freed  from  punishment  should  be  good,  was  solved 
by  recognizing  the  fact  that  the  believer  who  had 
the  Spirit  of  God  should  realize  the  new  life  bom  of 
this  union  and  mortify  the  flesh  or  the  lower  self. 
His  salvation  was  therefore  not  accomplished  by 
"  works  "  but  as  the  outcome  of  eternal  life  was  to 
lead  to  good  works. 

As  every  student  of  the  New  Testament  knows, 
the  significance  of  the  gospel  was  further  traced  by 
Paul  into  practically  all  the  departments  of  human 
life  and  thought.  It  is  unnecessary,  however,  to 
follow  him  or  his  fellow-apostles  farther,  as  we  are 
now  interested  not  so  much  in  their  application  of 
the  gospel  or  its  correlation  with  their  other  beliefs 
and  knowledge  as  with  the  chief  content  of  the 
gospel  itself. 

2.  Now  a  consideration  of  this  summary  of  the 
evangelic  message  will  show  that,  clothed  though  it 
was  in  a  Jewish  apocalyptic  terminology  which  to  a 


52   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

scientific  age  is  all  but  unintelligible,  the  gospel  was 
regarded  as  an  historical  demonstration  of  the  saving 
love  of  a  law-abiding  God ;  the  exposition  of  a  hope 
concerning  the  future  of  those  who  really  believe  in 
Jesus  as  God's  Christ,  guaranteed  by  the  Christ's 
experience.  In  brief,  it  was  the  message  of  a  mor- 
ally regenerating  communion  with  God  made  easier 
and  complete  through  a  knowledge  of  the  life,  death, 
and  resurrection  of  Jesus. 

So  far  as  the  individual  believer  is  concerned, 
these  facts  on  which  the  gospel  was  based  are  ob- 
jective. Take  away  the  historical,  risen  Jesus,  and 
you  take  away  the  gospel  in  its  original  sense.  And 
you  change  the  definition  of  Christianity  itself. 
For  Christianity  as  the  embodiment  of  the  gospel 
is  a  phase  of  religion  determined  by  historical  facts 
and  conditions. 

It  is  well  to  pause  a  moment  over  this  statement, 
because  men  of  the  less  conservative  type  have  an 
increasing  tendency  to  treat  Christianity  and  religion 
as  synonymous.  Such  procedure,  however,  is  either 
to  generahze  Christianity  out  of  existence  or  to 
minimize  the  r61e  of  concrete  historical  facts  as 
aids  to  giving  intellectual  content  to  religion.  There 
is  a  certain  type  of  mind  which  cannot  conceive 
of  the  significance  of  a  concrete  fact  until  it  has 


THE   CHURCH   AND  THE   GOSPEL  53 

been  made  over  into  an  abstract  proposition  or 
reduced  to  terms  of  a  theory  of  knowledge.  There 
are  religious  teachers  who  would  insist  that  alleged 
historical  facts  derived  from  ancient  records  have 
no  direct  significance  to  religious  experience,  or  at 
least  that  it  is  possible  so  to  utilize  them  as  to  out- 
grow them.  In  the  words  of  Coningsby  Dawson 
they  would  say :  — 

"  If  He  lived  or  died,  I  do  not  know, 
For  who  shall  disprove  the  words  of  the  dead, 
And  who  may  approve  of  the  wisdom  they  said. 
That  lips  of  dust  uttered  so  long  ago  ? 
And  where  He  is  buried,  I  may  not  know. 

"  If  He  Uved  or  died,  I  cannot  say, 
But  loneliness  knows  the  sound  of  His  naihe; 
That  men  could  imagine  such  love  is  the  same 
To  me  as  a  living  of  yesterday. 
And  words  which  God  speaks  are  the  prayers  men  say. 

"  If  He  lived  or  died,  I  may  not  know. 
For  who  shall  disprove  the  words  of  the  dead, 
Or  who  may  approve  of  the  wisdom  they  said  ? 
For  me  He  is  not  of  the  long  ago, 
But  speaks  in  the  mom  of  my  life,  I  know." 

Far  be  it  from  me  to  minimize  the  inestimably 
valuable  evidence  of  the  Christian  life.  But  it  is 
imperative  that  we  recognize  the  fact  that  the  sec- 
tion of  the  church  which  is  really  being  influenced 


54   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

by  to-day's  philosophical  and  scientific  thought  is 
moving  pretty  rapidly  toward  a  conception  of  the 
gospel  different  from  that  which  we  find  in  the  New 
Testament.  This  change  is  due  in  no  small  degree 
to  a  suspicion  as  to  the  historicity  of  the  cardinal 
facts  of  Jesus'  life  and  to  an  insidious  agnosticism 
regarding  such  of  the  New  Testament  thought  as 
centres  about  immortality.  The  representatives 
of  this  tendency,  like  the  New  Testament  writers, 
would  define  the  gospel  as  a  message  of  deliverance, 
but,  unlike  those  writers,  would  make  it  a  message 
of  deliverance  from  the  anxieties  and  sins  of  life. 
Their  kingdom  of  God  is  a  new  social  order  here 
upon  earth  under  historical  relations. 

That  the  gospel  implies  such  a  message  no  one 
can  deny.  But  the  progressive  theologian  of  this 
class  must  answer  the  further  question  whether 
or  not  he,  like  Paul  and  Jesus,  will  add  to  this  message 
of  moral  deliverance  and  social  evolution  the  further 
promise  of  release  from  the  power  of  death  the  penalty 
of  sin;  of  deliverance  from  that  fearful  state  which 
Paul  calls  the  wrath  of  God;  of  a  deliverance  that 
involves  the  replacement  in  death  by  that  body 
which  we  have  inherited  from  an  animal  past  by 
a  higher  medium  of  communication  between  our- 
selves and  the  outer  world. 


THE  CHURCH   AND   THE   GOSPEL  55 

The  church  is  particularly  interested  in  this  ques- 
tion of  the  real  content  of  the  gospel  because  we  are 
persistently  told  that  religion  and  science  are  two 
exclusive  spheres,  and  that  religion  is  not  involved 
in  scientific  investigation.  Religion,  says  Professor 
Santayana,  "must  withdraw  its  pretensions  to  be 
dealing  with  matters  of  fact."  While  no  one  would 
deny  that  there  is  a  great  element  of  truth  in  this 
contention,  we  may  as  well  face  the  fact  that  in  such 
an  antithesis  the  character  of  the  gospel  is  being 
decidedly  modified.  Religion  as  a  form  of  human 
experience  may  be  independent  of  specific  facts  in 
history,  but  the  gospel  as  a  means  of  inducing  and 
regulating  that  experience  certainly  contains  his- 
torical elements.  Paul  puts  the  matter  flatly,  "If 
Christ  be  not  raised  from  the  dead,  then  our  preach- 
ing is  vain."  He  does  not  mean  by  such  a  state- 
ment to  imply  that  religion  might  vanish,  for  he 
would  still  believe  in  the  God  of  Judaism.  What 
he  does  mean  is  that  in  the  destruction  of  the  his- 
toric fact  of  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  as  he  conceives 
it,  the  gospel  as  a  basis  for  a  new  type  of  religion 
has  disappeared  and  with  it  the  new  and  particular 
form  of  religion  as  well. 

But  in  history  as  in  the  body  of  the  resurrection, 
religion  overlaps  the  field  of  science.    To  the  his- 


56   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

torian  and  to  the  common  mind  alike,  the  Pauline 
position  seems  very  much  more  intelligible  than 
that  of  those  men  who  insist  that  one  may  give  up 
Jesus  as  an  actual  revelation  of  God,  may  deny  his 
resurrection  as  a  historic  fact,  may  evacuate  the 
doctrines  of  the  atonement  and  of  justification  of 
all  the  content  given  them  by  the  apostolic  preachers, 
may  reduce  the  hope  of  the  doctrine  of  personal 
immortality  to  that  of  an  immortality  of  influence, 
and  still  claim  to  be  preaching  the  gospel. 

Conceivably  such  an  emptying  of  Christianity 
of  all  historical  contents  may  be  in  the  line  of  en- 
throning an  empirical  religion  of  superior  merit,  but 
that  is  simply  to  put  the  question  we  are  now  con- 
sidering more  distinctly:  Do  the  times  demand 
such  a  dehistoricalized  message? 

This  is  a  supreme  question.  It  is  no  wonder  that 
men  committed  to  doctrines  which  rise  and  fall  with 
the  reality  of  the  historical  Jesus,  resent  the  propa- 
ganda which  in  the  name  of  scientific  theology 
would  reduce  Jesus  to  a  beautiful  ideal,  his  resurrec- 
tion to  an  illusion,  and  the  gospel  as  anything  more 
than  religious  experience  to  the  esoteric  tenets  of 
hypothetical  groups  of  "Nazarenes"  or  pre-Christian 
Syrian  Gnostics. 

Whether  or  not  this  resentment  is  justifiable,  must 


THE   CHURCH  AND  THE   GOSPEL  57 

be  left  for  discussion  a  little  later.  At  this  point 
it  will  be  enough  to  refer  to  the  substitute  which  is 
oflFered  in  the  place  of  a  gospel  of  historic  fact  — 
a  religion  of  experience  bom  of  illusions.  It  was 
these  illusions  according  to  a  recent  writer  that 
preserved  "the  invaluable  treasure  of  the  Christian 
teaching  and  of  the  figure  of  the  teacher."  Without 
the  historical  Jesus  the  gospels  would  become  "more 
wonderful  and  more  encouraging  than  before,  for 
the  profound  wisdom  and  lofty  character  found  in 
them  would  prove  to  be  the  expression  not  of  a 
single  and  unique  religion  of  Jesus,  but  of  the 
spiritual  ideals  of  many  humble  and  unknown 
men." 
Is  this  the  gospel  or  the  ghost  of  the  gospel? 

II 

But  can  this  gospel  of  facts  be  preached  effec- 
tively to  our  modem  world  ? 

I.  It  is  claimed  by  certain  apologists  that  such  a 
message  is  no  longer  possible  except  to  the  intel- 
lectually anachronistic  masses;  that  the  Christian 
church  gains  decidedly  by  waiving  all  questions  of 
historicity.  But,  granting  the  difficulties  besetting 
the  discovery  of  historical  facts,  such  a  procedure 
constitutes  a  very  singular  apologetic.    In  order  to 


58   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

occupy  impregnable  evangelical  grounds  it  abandons 
much  if  not  all  that  in  the  New  Testament  sense  is 
evangelical.  It  is  as  if  Russia  after  having  lost  her 
navy  had  congratulated  herself  that  she  was  guar- 
anteed from  naval  defeat.  There  was  once  a  man 
who  after  a  rather  stormy  financial  career  found 
himself  insolvent.  He  took  philosophical  pleasure 
in  the  situation  by  declaring  himself  independently 
poor.  The  position  of  the  apologist  who  begins  his 
defence  of  the  gospel  by  surrendering  everything 
above  the  generic  questions  of  religion  that  is  really 
the  subject  of  serious  debate,  is  about  the  same. 
Evangelically  he  is  independently  poor. 

Whether  or  not  such  a  stricture  as  this  upon  cur- 
rent apologetic  be  justifiable,  the  church  has  not  yet 
reached  a  place  where  it  can  reduce  fact  to  illusion 
in  the  name  of  functional  psychology.  There  is 
a  tendency  nowadays,  particularly  on  the  part  of 
those  of  a  philosophical  rather  than  a  scientific 
trend  of  mind,  to  insist  that  a  historical  record  may 
be  true  even  though  the  facts  which  it  claims  to 
describe  never  existed.  According  to  such  a  view 
the  resurrection  of  Jesus  may  be  a  truth  although  it 
may  not  be  a  fact.  That  is  to  say,  behef  in  it  may 
have  led  to  the  coordination  of  Christian  life  and 
thought  and  to  the  inspiration  of  Christian  activity ; 


THE   CHURCH  AND  THE   GOSPEL  59 

but  such  results  give  no  assurance  that  the  resurrec- 
tion as  described  by  Paul  actually  occurred. 

When  once  such  a  method  is  given  the  sanction 
of  a  technical  vocabulary,  it  is  likely  to  have  no 
small  influence  in  religious  thinking.  Nor  can  it  be 
denied  that  in  certain  regions  it  is  of  real  help. 
Truth  does  find  its  highest  attestation  in  experience. 
The  goodness  of  God,  for  instance,  establishes  itself 
by  the  test  of  the  effect  upon  human  conduct  of  a 
belief  in  His  love.  It  becomes  reasonable  because 
it  is  borne  out  by  the  moral  development  which  re- 
sults from  accepting  it  as  a  working  hypothesis  of 
faith  and  conduct.  Even  if  there  were  no  historical 
Jesus,  the  highest  religious  idealism  probably  —  I 
say  probably  advisedly  —  would  demand  that  the 
conception  of  God  as  Father  be  held  to  be  a  truth. 
Its  worth  would  be  its  guarantee. 

But  this  conception  of  the  gospel,  so  far  from  that 
set  forth  in  the  New  Testament  and  in  Christian 
history,  is  not  likely  to  be  of  particular  help  to  any 
one  expect  the  pragmatic  philosopher.  Men  who 
hold  it  persist  in  asserting  that  such  a  view  of  Jesus 
as  commonly  prevails  in  our  churches  identifies 
religion  with  the  acceptance  of  alleged  facts  liable 
to  be  destroyed  by  archaeology  or  criticism.  But 
any  reasonable  orthodoxy  —  and  there  is  such  — 


6o   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

as  truly  as  a  liberal  historico-biblical  evangelicalism 
will  deny  that  it  makes  historic  facts  the  basis  of 
religion.  It  makes  the  evangelic  facts  aids  to  religion. 
Such  a  practice  may  characterize  "scientific"  theol- 
ogy as  well.  For  why  should  a  theology  be  scientific 
only  when  it  is  negative?  So  to  use  facts  is  to  do 
precisely  what  the  anti-historical  pragmatist  would 
do  with  his  historical  illusions,  —  employ  them  for 
the  inspiration,  the  direction,  and  the  enrichment 
of  faith.  But  a  belief  in  realities  is  more  effective 
than  a  belief  in  illusions.  That  is  the  reason  why 
a  genuine  evangelicalism,  whether  it  be  conservative 
or  liberal,  will  always  have  vastly  more  power  than 
a  religious  apologetic  that  tries  to  convert  the  world 
with  a  minimum  of  religious  certainty.  The  church 
should  welcome  all  arguments  that  prove  men  may 
believe  in  God  and  have  communion  with  Him  and 
be  blessed  in  Hving  with  Him  even  if  criticism  should 
destroy  the  historical  Jesus;  but  it  must  also  recall 
that  it  is  the  custodian  of  the  gospel  —  a  record  of 
facts  supplementary  to  this  generic  religious  faith. 
These  facts  do  indeed  open  the  door  to  historical 
criticism.  But  they  are  not  thereby  destroyed. 
Rather  they  are  being  established.  And  if  it  comes 
to  a  choice  between  the  difficulties  of  criticism  and 
those  of  epistemology,for  one  I  will  choose  the  former. 


THE   CHURCH   AND  THE   GOSPEL  6l 

It  is  easy  enough  to  forecast  the  effects  of  this  sort 
of  presentation  of  an  unhistorical  gospel.  If  once 
the  world  becomes  convinced  that  Jesus  has  no  more 
reality  than  his  value  as  a  working  hypothesis  of 
God's  character,  and  that  the  gospels  have  only  a 
functional  worth,  the  church  as  an  aggressive  spirit- 
ual force  will  go  out  of  commission.  The  very  men 
who  champion  such  a  view  will  find  it  difficult  to 
do  more  than  reshape  the  religious  fervor  and  faith 
which  belong  to  men  who  once  lived  assured  of  the 
actual  historicity  of  a  risen  Christ.  The  world  at 
large  has  very  little  use  for  a  myth  or  a  legend  or 
an  illusion,  no  matter  how  it  may  assist  it  to  func- 
tion rehgiously.  We  may  need  sometimes  to  specu- 
late as  to  what  would  be  left  the  world  if  evangelical 
theology  were  to  go  into  bankruptcy;  but  it  does 
not  become  us  to  depreciate  its  assets,  much  less 
call  for  a  receiver  of  a  solvent  concern. 

2.  There  is  little  gained  by  insisting  that  in  the 
place  of  the  historical  Jesus  we  have  the  spirit  of 
Jesus.  The  very  phrase  is  in  itself  difficult  of  under- 
standing. It  is  biblical,  but  with  something  other 
than  the  biblical  content.  The  spirit  of  Jesus  in  the 
New  Testament  is  the  Holy  Spirit  sent  by  him  to 
his  disciples,  their  final  argument  to  establish  that 
he  was  the  Christ.    That  is  to  say,  their  experience 


62   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

of  God  was  conditioned  upon  their  acceptance  of  the 
historical  Jesus  at  a  certain  valuation.  The  fact 
that  the  epistles  contain  little  information  about  his 
life  and  deeds  and  words  beyond  the  facts  of  his 
suffering  and  resurrection,  is  no  argument  for  hold- 
ing that  Paul  and  his  fellow-apostles  cared  nothing 
for  such  matters.  On  the  contrary,  their  dependence 
upon  the  historical  Jesus  stands  out  in  every  page  of 
their  epistles.  But  they  did  not  need  to  talk  about 
his  deeds  and  words.  They  could  presuppose  knowl- 
edge of  them.  Otherwise  what  were  Mark  and  the 
other  ministers  of  the  word  doing? 

It  must  be  admitted  that  the  term  "  historical  Jesus" 
sometimes  has  a  connotation  calculated  to  justify 
this  insistence  upon  the  superiority  of  the  non-his- 
torical spiritual  Christianity.  Unfortunately  much 
of  the  historical  study  of  Jesus'  life  gives  the  impres- 
sion that  the  most  important  matters  for  religion  are 
archaeology,  geography,  literary  criticism,  and  the 
defence  of  the  historicity  of  every  line  of  the  evan- 
gelic records.  If  to  study  the  historical  Jesus  means 
that  it  is  necessary  only  and  primarily  to  know  just 
where  and  why  and  how  he  did  a  certain  thing, 
any  sensible  man  will  admit  that  the  "historical 
Jesus"  might  be  either  a  source  of  new  legalism  or 
a  creature  of  the  pedants.     But  such  a  conception  is 


THE  CHURCH   AND  THE   GOSPEL  63 

far  enough  from  what  properly  is  meant  by  the  term. 
Not  the  complete  picture  of  Jesus  with  his  peculiari- 
ties of  life  known  to  the  last  detail,  but  the  presenta- 
tion of  a  Jesus  who  actually  existed  as  an  historical 
person,  the  main  events  of  whose  life  are  really 
those  which  to  Paul  and  others  of  his  contemporaries 
made  the  content  of  a  completer  revelation  of  God  — 
that  is  what  the  preaching  of  the  "historical  Jesus" 
demands.  To  be  convinced  of  the  reality  of  the 
main  elements  of  such  a  life  is  not  to  create  a  new 
legalism  or  to  make  the  critic  a  priest ;  it  is  to  have  at 
one's  disposal  a  group  of  facts  which  can  be  brought 
into  relationship  with  the  facts  of  Christian  experi- 
ence and  of  science  and  so  be  made  to  form  the  basis 
of  a  noble  induction  which  shall  control  our  religious 
ideals  and  kindle  our  religious  hopes  and  deepen  our 
religious  faith  with  the  power  of  reality. 

Shall  the  church  use  these  facts  of  evangelic 
history,  or  shall  it  rely  upon  dogmatic  authority, 
theories  of  knowledge,  and  mysticism?  If  facts  are 
to  be  used,  why  not  discover  them  methodically 
and  use  them  frankly  as  facts  without  attempting  to 
account  for  them  or  to  declare  that  something  else 
is  better  than  they?  There  is  a  real  danger  lest 
the  church  in  its  zeal  for  things  spiritual  should 
forget  that  the  truest  spiritual  life  is  that  which  is 


64   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

bom  from  the  recognition  of  realities  which  ante- 
date one's  own  experience  and  can  be  substantiated 
by  the  processes  of  historical  criticism  as  well  as 
by  one's  own  growth  in  grace. 

3.  It  is  worth  while,  however,  to  consider  spe- 
cifically three  objections  to  preaching  this  gospel 
of  the  practicability  of  a  godlike  life  extending  natu- 
rally into  a  blessed  future  after  death,  based  not 
upon  philosophy,  but  upon  the  actual  career  of 
Jesus. 

First,  it  is  alleged  that  such  a  gospel  has  been 
destroyed  by  historical  criticism. 

This  charge  has  a  measure  of  justification.  If  the 
conclusion  of  certain  radical  critics  are  the  legiti- 
mate and  the  only  results  of  the  critical  process,  one 
may  very  well  abandon  any  attempt  at  preaching 
the  gospel  in  the  New  Testament  sense  of  the  word. 
But  these  conclusions  are  not  Hkely  to  prevail  except 
among  those  who  live  in  the  highest  altitude  of  anti- 
supematuralism.  It  is  not  that  the  method  employed 
by  men  like  Schmiedel  and  Van  Manen  and  Schmidt 
is  incorrect.  It  is  the  only  permissible  method.  The 
real  difficulty  lies  in  the  fact  that  such  critics  use  as 
criteria  of  their  normative  processes  certain  presup- 
positions and  ingenious  guesses  as  to  what  things  are 
not  and  cannot  be.    One  may  follow  their  method 


THE   CHURCH  AND  THE   GOSPEL  65 

as  long  as  it  is  genuinely  comparative,  but  when  it 
comes  to  a  choice  between  on  the  one  hand  a  risen 
Jesus  possessed,  not,  it  is  true,  of  ordinary  flesh  and 
blood,  but  of  genuinely  objective  reality,  and  on  the 
other  hand  a  belief  on  the  part  of  the  apostles  in 
a  risen  Jesus  which  was  merely  the  product  of  hyp- 
notic suggestion,  the  church  must  choose  the  former. 
Criticism  itself  suggests  the  choice.  For,  except 
in  the  case  of  such  of  its  phases  as  are  controlled  by 
certain  phases  of  philosophy,  the  tendency  of  criti- 
cism is  toward  a  larger  recognition  of  the  historical 
aspects  of  the  New  Testament.  It  is  unfair  to  charge 
up  to  it  the  denials  of  philosophy  and  excessive  in- 
genuity. 

Secondly,  it  is  claimed  by  some  that  this  gospel  of 
hopes  built  upon  historical  facts  cannot  be  preached 
because  it  involves  the  miraculous. 

Now  while  he  may  not  admit  with  Schmiedel  that 
as  regards  historicity  the  accounts  of  the  gospel  vary 
from  those  that  are  per  se  incredible  to  those  that  are 
per  se  credible,  even  the  conservative  will  admit  that 
there  are  miracles  and  miracles.  No  man  under  the 
influence  of  to-day's  scientific  thought  can  believe 
in  any  anti-legalism  in  God's  relation  to  his  world. 
It  is  impossible  for  him  to  conceive  of  an  exceptional 
event  as  possessing  more  defensive  value  for  religion 


66   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

than  is  furnished  by  the  intelligible  uniformity  of 
nature.  He  finds  God  more  evident  in  the  rule  than 
in  the  exception.  He  knows  that  many  people  at 
the  time  when  the  New  Testament  was  written  called 
some  things  miracles  which  we  have  learned  to  clas- 
sify under  different  names.  But  he  will  not  define 
"miracle"  so  cleverly  as  to  evaporate  that  for  which 
it  really  stands — an  unclassified  exhibition  of  divine 
power. 

The  issue  is  obviously  something  more  than  one  of 
logomachy.  Wholly  apart  from  the  explanations 
given  by  his  contemporaries,  does  a  fair  criticism 
lead  us  to  believe  that  Jesus  actually  performed  the 
acts  attributed  to  him  in  the  gospels?  If  it  can  do 
this  it  makes  very  little  difference  whether  we  de- 
scribe those  acts  by  one  word  or  another.  We  may 
call  them  supernatural  or  preternatural  or  natural. 
Every  theist  believes  that  all  force  is  God's  force. 
The  distinction  between  natural  and  supernatural 
is  one  for  a  debating  society.  It  should  not  be  al- 
lowed to  cloud  the  issue  as  to  fact.  If  something 
exceptional  happened,  we  may  be  sure  that  in  bring- 
ing it  to  pass  God  did  nOt  throw  the  universe  into 
anarchy.  If  Jesus  could  cure  men  of  deadly  dis- 
eases and  show  himself,  however  inexplicably,  to 
his  disciples  after  his  death,  he  was  possessed  of  a 


THE   CHURCH   AND  THE   GOSPEL  67 

personality  able  to  accomplish  such  things.  That 
is  the  main  thing.     Jesus  is  the  real  miracle. 

Because  we  find  difficulty  in  accepting  as  strictly 
historical  the  accounts  of  the  so-called  nature 
miracles,  such  as  walking  upon  water  and  turning 
water  into  wine,  is  no  argument  for  an  off-hand  re- 
jection of  the  gospel  narrative  as  a  whole,  or  even  a 
curtailing  of  its  trustworthiness  to  the  limits  set  by 
the  theologians  of  the  extreme  left.  Suppose  we 
should  find  that  the  accounts  of  such  matters  must 
be  rejected  for  good  and  sufficient  reasons,  the 
church  would  still  value  Jesus  as  the  revelation  of 
the  ever  loving  God.  It  would  still  have  its  real 
gospel. 

For  the  church  is  vitally  interested  in  discover- 
ing, not  whether  the  water  was  actually  turned  into 
wine,  but  whether  Jesus  actually  "showed  himself 
alive  after  his  passion."  Did  he  or  did  he  not  really 
communicate  with  the  apostles  on  the  first  Easter 
Day?  Once  settle  that  and  the  problem  of  nature 
miracles  will  take  care  of  itself  or  can  be  left  for 
more  light.  Not  that  it  is  necessary  to  establish 
the  historicity  of  every  detail  in  the  various  New 
Testament  accounts  of  the  resurrection  any  more 
than  on  the  other  hand  there  is  need  to  rationalize 
those  accounts  or  to  eviscerate  them  by  clever  re- 


68   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

definition  or  appeal  to  functional  psychology  and 
pragmatic  philosophy.  The  bald  fact  of  communi- 
cation between  Jesus  and  his  apostle,  as  declared 
in  I  Corinthians,  is  a  minimum  as  defensible  as 
it  is  evangelic. 

There  is  nothing  in  the  New  Testament  so  thor- 
oughly substantiated  by  impartial  criticism  as  the 
belief  of  the  apostles  of  the  resurrection  of  Jesus. 
As  yet  there  has  been  suggested  no  way  of  accounting 
for  that  belief  so  satisfactory  as  the  hypothesis  that 
the  apostles  actually  experienced  what  they  thought 
they  experienced.  Paul  knew  what  visions  were; 
one  might  almost  call  him  a  connoisseur  in  visions. 
But  when  he  came  to  discuss  the  resurrection  of 
the  believer  he  frankly  bases  his  confidence  in  it  not 
upon  visions,  but  upon  the  fact  of  the  risen  Jesus. 
The  more  we  know  about  life  the  more  does  it  grow 
possible  to  show  that  such  an  alleged  fact  is  not 
necessarily  contrary  to  the  laws  of  nature;  and  as 
a  criticism  in  the  hands  of  historians  replaces  the 
vagaries  of  a  criticism  in  the  hands  of  philologians, 
the  more  does  it  seem  able  to  meet  the  difficulties 
inherent  in  the  story  itself.  Whether  or  not  the 
resurrection  is  called  a  "miracle"  is  comparatively 
of  little  importance.  As  a  fact  substantiable  to  a 
high  degree  of  probability  by  a  fair  criticism  and 


THE   CHURCH   AND  THE   GOSPEL  69 

psychology,  it  is  something  too  precious  to  be  dis- 
carded or  belittled. 

In  the  third  place  it  is  urged  that  we  should  not 
preach  this  objective  gospel  because  it  involves  an 
eschatological  hope  too  naive  for  the  modem  man. 

But  why  should  eschatology  be  an  objection? 

It  must  be  admitted  that  no  man  whose  thought 
is  under  the  dominance  of  scientific  concepts  can 
approach  the  eschatology  of  the  New  Testament 
with  full  assent  to  its  literal  interpretation.  It  is 
too  largely  the  survival  of  pharisaic  apocalyptic. 
But  it  is  easy  to  remove  such  interpretative  elements 
by  the  use  of  a  definable  method.  There  are,  in 
fact,  few  ministers  outside  of  those  who  are  aggres- 
sive champions  of  theological  literalism  who  do  em- 
phasize the  details  of  New  Testament  eschatology. 
But  this  is  not  to  deny  the  reasonableness  or  the  power 
of  that  which  lies  at  the  heart  of  the  Jewish  apocalyp- 
tic hope  when  once  it  is  properly  interpreted.  The 
kingdom  of  God  never  came  as  the  apostles  expected 
it  to  come ;  but  God  came,  and  God  will  continue  to 
come  to  the  man  who  has  living  faith  in  Jesus.  It 
has  been  its  eschatological  message  which  has  given 
the  gospel  its  grip  upon  human  life.  For  escha- 
tology is  one  phase  of  a  developing  doctrine  of  im- 
mortality. 


70   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

m 

Shall  the  church  preach  a  gospel  that  presupposes 
and  emphasizes  immortahty  ? 

Your  "  modem  man  "  is  endeavoring  to  construct  an 
ethics  for  men  and  women  who  possess  no  immor- 
tality. Not  that  he  would  frankly  deny  that  there 
may  be  life  after  death,  but  he  will  not  assert  it  with 
any  degree  of  conviction,  and  judges  that  it  will  be 
on  the  whole  safer  if  he  can  persuade  men  and  women 
to  be  good  regardless  of  whether  death  ends  all. 
We  ought  to  be  good  in  any  case,  he  argues ;  we  may 
or  may  not  be  immortal.  If  a  good  man  discovers 
after  death  that  he  is  still  living,  he  will  be  none  the 
worse  for  having  attained  virtue  without  that  expec- 
tation. It  will  be  a  sort  of  gracious  surprise.  If, 
on  the  other  hand,  after  death  he  finds  himself  anni- 
hilated, the  world  will  at  least  have  had  the  benefit 
of  his  virtues,  and  none  of  his  expectations  of  the 
future  will  have  been  disappointed. 

I  would  not  attempt  to  deny  that  a  virtue  can  be 
taught  which  adopts  this  caution  as  to  the  future. 
The  church,  however,  in  enforcing  such  an  ethics,  and 
in  adopting  such  a  non-committal  attitude  as  to  im- 
mortality, and  in  insisting  that  the  doctrine  of  future 
rewards  and  punishments  is  to  play  no  r6le  in  the 


THE   CHURCH   AND  THE   GOSPEL  7 1 

region  of  motive,  is  making  a  fundamental  mistake. 
It  is  playing  into  the  hands  of  its  enemies  and  is  in 
a  fair  way  to  take  all  vitality  out  of  morality.  It  can 
offer  a  moral  culture  for  a  generation  whose  moral 
momentum  has  been  set  by  an  inherited  belief  in 
immortality,  but  it  is  making  it  certain  that  the  moral- 
ity of  that  generation's  grandchildren  will  be  little 
better  than  a  regard  for  the  conventions. 

You  cannot  arouse  enthusiasm  for  righteousness 
among  people  who  you  are  assuring  may  be  simply 
a  new  type  of  animal.  You  cannot  induce  men  to 
be  good  by  insisting  that  they  are  under  the  duty 
of  improving  the  race.  Posterity  has  little  hold  upon 
any  one  who  is  convinced  that  the  great  argument 
for  morality  is  to  be  found  in  stock  farms.  If  such 
a  person  has  any  atavistic  tendency  toward  that 
conscience  which  his  grandfathers  developed  be- 
cause they  believed  that  death  did  not  end  all,  he 
will  see  to  it  that  so  far  as  he  is  concerned  there  is 
no  posterity  to  live  for. 

Christian  men  and  teachers  may  as  well  face  the 
situation.  A  morality  that  does  not  at  some  point 
draw  its  motives  from  immortality  has  seldom  been 
very  effective  and  will  be  less  effective  in  the  future. 
For  the  Christian  church  with  its  risen  Founder  to 
abandon  its  teaching  as  to  immortality  is  to  make  a 


72   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

bid  for  spiritual  bankruptcy.  If  the  Christian  church 
does  not  soon  come  to  a  realizing  sense  of  its  position, 
it  will  discover  that  just  as  it  is  allowing  socialism 
to  usurp  its  position  as  a  champion  of  peace  and 
fraternity  and  social  justice,  so  it  will  have  allowed 
science  to  have  usurped  its  position  as  a  herald  of 
immortality. 

But  why  should  Christian  preachers  hesitate  to 
preach  a  gospel  that  has  at  its  very  centre  a  trium- 
phant conviction  that  man  does  not  die  like  the  beast, 
but  that  he  may  rise  into  life  like  Jesus  the  Christ  ? 
Are  we  afraid  to  be  called  immortal? 

It  is  not  hard  to  find  answers  to  these  questions. 
The  scientific  study  of  religion,  just  like  every  other 
science,  is  more  interested  in  origins  than  it  is  in 
destiny.  We  will  spend  years  trying  to  discover 
whence  we  came;  what  our  primitive  ancestors 
did  when  they  first  made  up  their  minds  to  be  hu- 
man rather  than  simians ;  whether  morality  is  in  any 
way  related  to  a  circulation  of  the  blood  close  to  the 
skin ;  whether  men  are  more  religious  after  dinner 
or  before  dinner.  But  we  can  be  silent  as  to  the 
destiny  of  the  individual.  We  talk  with  a  splendid 
generosity  of  generalization  about  the  future  of  the 
race.  We  are  sure  at  least  of  a  reasonable  immor- 
tality of  that  sort  as  long  as  we  have  immigrants 


THE   CHURCH   AND  THE   GOSPEL  73 

with  large  families.  But  how  often  do  our  modem 
prophets  preach  convincing  and  enthusiastic  ser- 
mons on  the  outcome  of  the  individual  life  as  set  by 
death  ?  Possibly  at  Easter,  but  even  at  Easter  too 
many  "modem  men"  prefer  to  tell  how  mother  na- 
ture gives  birth  to  beautiful  spring,  how  butterflies 
come  out  of  cocoons,  and  how  goodness  emerges 
from  badness. 

Then  again  we  hesitate  to  bring  immortality  into 
the  region  of  morals  because  of  rewards  and  punish- 
ments. For  if  there  is  anything  that  your  ethical 
teacher  nowadays  is  determined  to  avoid  it  is  the 
thought  of  a  reward  or  a  punishment.  Any  ethics 
which  says  that  a  man  should  undertake  to  be  good 
because  he  would  be  better  off  for  being  good,  is  to 
him  an  abomination  that  makes  desolate. 

It  must  be,  of  course,  admitted  that  the  rewards 
and  punishments  of  immortality  too  often  have  been 
presented  crudely.  Who  of  us  has  not  pendulated 
between  horror  and  apiusement  as  we  have  looked 
at  the  pictures  of  the  churches  and  art  galleries  of 
Europe  which  portray  the  joys  of  the  saved  and  the 
sufiFerings  of  the  damned  ? 

But  there  is  at  least  one  thing  to  be  said  for  the 
ethics  of  rewards  and  punishment.  After  you  have 
stripped  it  of  its  crudity,  it  is  adapted  to  human  needs. 


74   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

Possibly  there  has  been  such  a  thing  as  art  for  art's 
sake,  although  most  of  us  have  discovered  that  art 
also  exists  quite  as  much  for  income's  sake.  But 
goodness  for  goodness'  sake  has  about  as  much  grip 
on  the  ordinary  human  as  cleanliness  for  cleanli- 
ness' sake.  It  is  time  the  church  realized  that  sin 
is,  as  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  says,  akin  to  disease;  that 
it  carries  with  it  inevitable  suffering  of  the  sinner 
as  well  as  of  the  person  sinned  against.  Until  the 
Christian  teacher  really  is  possessed  of  a  horror  of 
moral  degeneration,  he  is  not  likely  to  be  very  keen  to 
herald  a  gospel  of  salvation  from  suffering  as  well 
as  from  imperfection. 

Another  reason  why  a  belief  in  immortality  has 
been  banished  from  morality  is  the  fact  that  our 
religious  teachers  are  in  a  sort  of  philosophical, 
psychological,  anthropological,  epistemological  panic. 
Like  Childe  Roland  they  see  nothing  about  them 
but  ranks  upon  ranks  of  men  who  have  been 
defeated  by  the  Lord  of  the  Dark  Tower.  A  mili- 
tant conviction  as  to  immortality  has  been  put  to 
flight  by  monads,  totems,  survivals  of  animism,  and 
problems  of  knowledge.  When  once  these  serried 
hosts  have  advanced,  too  many  religious  teachers 
have  looked  about  for  a  line  of  dignified  retreat. 
What    chance    has    the    foolishness    of    preaching 


THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  GOSPEL  75 

against  the  combined  forces  of  a  new  philosophy, 
a  new  psychology,  a  new  anthropology,  a  new 
epistemology  ? 

But  while  religious  teachers  have  been  talking 
about  the  beauties  of  Browning  and  the  duties  of 
school  boards,  the  scientists  have  turned  preachers. 
Immortality  stands  to-day  on  a  stronger  apologetic 
basis  than  ever  before,  not  because  of  the  convic- 
tion of  the  preacher  of  the  gospel,  but  because  of 
men  like  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  and  Frederic  W.  H.  Myers, 
John  Fiske,  and  Professors  Royce  and  Shaler,  and 
that  group  of  higher  critics  who,  undismayed  by 
the  assaults  of  epistemology,  are  convinced  that  the 
resurrection  of  Jesus  is  something  more  than  the  child 
of  auto-suggestion  and  feminine  hysteria. 

I  do  not  need  to  recount  the  rdle  which  evolution 
has  played  in  reestablishing  confidence  in  immor- 
tality not  only  of  the  genus,  but  of  the  individual. 
There  are  questions  here  to  be  given  better  answers 
than  they  have  as  yet  received,  but  the  man  who 
believes  in  the  development  of  an  as  yet  partially 
free  individuality  from  the  determined  life  of  a  lower 
animalism  finds  a  new  article  for  his  creed  in  Royce's 
splendid  paraphrase  of  Paul,  "This  mortal  must  put 
on  individuality."  He  cannot  believe  that  the  uni- 
verse should  have  groaned  and  travailed  together 


76   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

in  pain  to  produce  humanity  and  then  treat  men  as 
if  they  were  of  no  more  value  than  mice. 

But  just  because  immortality  seems  demanded  for 
carrying  one  step  farther  the  evolution  of  a  free  indi- 
vidual, does  it  determine  the  perspective  values  in  per- 
sonal goods.  A  man  is  as  much  a  possibility  as  he 
is  a  survival.  Between  those  elements  which  are 
the  results  of  completed  evolution  and  those  other 
elements  which  are  in  the  process  of  development 
into  a  completed  individuality  when  death  shall 
once  help  it  get  bom,  there  is  constant  struggle. 
Therein  is  morality. 

It  may  be  urged  that  such  considerations  exist 
even  in  case  the  higher  elements  of  self  are  not  im- 
mortal; that  as  Paulsen  says,  "ethics  will  not  change 
a  single  proposition  whether  there  be  life  after  death 
or  not;"  or  as  Robertson  says,  in  the  famous  pas- 
sage to  which  nearly  every  man  sooner  or  later  goes 
back,  even  if  there  were  no  immortal  life  it  would 
still  be  better  to  be  chaste  and  honest  and  generally 
virtuous.  Probably  this  would  be  the  case  provided 
only  that  we  could  be  sure  that  those  elements  which 
we  have  been  taught  to  believe  get  their  value 
because  they  are  elements  of  the  immortal  self 
are  really  the  more  valuable  when  immortality  is 
lost  in  religious  agnosticism.     But  how  is  one  to 


THE   CHURCH   AND  THE   GOSPEL  77 

be  sure  that  a  man  who,  like  Jesus,  cultivates  the 
spirit  of  love  and  sacrifice  is  not  a  weakling?  We 
are  apt  to  judge  him  such  in  the  rush  of  our  com- 
petitive world.  How  are  we  to  be  sure  that  self- 
restraint  is  better  than  self-indulgence  unless  we  are 
assured  that  the  lower  self  is  not  the  eternal  self? 
It  is  no  answer  to  say  that  love  and  heroism  and 
truthfulness  are  better  because  the  world  has  re- 
garded them  as  better  and  because  our  souls  express 
themselves  in  a  confidence  of  their  ultimate  suprem- 
acy. There  still  hangs  over  us  the  doubt  as  to 
whether  such  estimates  may  not  be  the  outcome  of 
a  morality  which  found  its  first  sanctions  and  in- 
hibitions in  a  doctrine  of  immortality,  or  whether 
they  may  not  be  merely  conventions  according  to 
which  men  have  agreed  to  live.  How  much  more 
assured  become  one's  convictions  as  to  the  ultimate 
value  of  love  and  temperance  and  self-sacrificing  jus- 
tice when  one  is  convinced  that  such  a  life  as  that 
of  Jesus  leads  to  certain  immortality ! 

It  is  a  stronger  objection  to  urge  that  such  an 
argument  as  this  for  the  tendency  of  evolution  can- 
not be  tested  by  actual  experience  and  so  must  al- 
ways lie  in  the  region  of  a  working  hypothesis,  and 
that  it  is  unwise  and  unscientific  to  incorporate  such 
a  hypothesis  in  anything  like  scientific  ethics.    This, 


78   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

we  suppose,  must  be  granted.  It  may  very  likely  be 
that  these  considerations  may  fail  to  meet  the  re- 
quirements of  scientific  ethicists  who  prefer  to  find 
a  firm  foundation  for  morality  in  the  habits  of  primi- 
tive man  who  lived  before  history.  But  this  much 
is  certain:  practical  morality  as  expressed  in  con- 
duct has  been  and  will  be  modified  by  a  conviction 
as  to  the  consummation  of  the  tendencies  of  person- 
ahty  in  the  immortal  hfe.  It  may  be  true  that  we 
are  no  longer  afraid  of  a  literal  hell  with  literal  flames, 
and  no  longer  desire  a  literal  heaven  with  literal 
streets  of  gold ;  but  every  reasonable  man  should 
stand  in  awe  of  a  spiritual  hell.  For  him  the  com- 
pletion of  personality  in  those  terms  which  a  blessed 
immortality  demands  is  as  likely  to  be  effective  in 
regulating  conduct  as  is  the  desire  for  a  healthy  ma- 
turity in  leading  to  the  observance  of  the  laws  of 
health  through  the  period  of  adolescence. 

Now  it  is  at  this  point  that  the  gospel  meets  us, 
and  bids  us  surrender  ourselves  to  this  impulse  and 
let  life  as  we  find  it  in  ourselves  express  itself  in  the 
search  for  a  discovery  of  the  next  higher  stage,  the 
life  of  that  nobler  age  which  is  yet  to  come.  Its 
position  is  as  tenable  for  the  evolutionist  as  it  is 
for  the  creationist;  indeed,  more  so.  For  eternal 
life,  as  Jesus  clearly  shows,  does  not  imply  the  injec- 


THE    CHURCH   AND   THE   GOSPEL  79 

tion  of  a  new  vital  quantum  into  personality,  but 
rather  is  the  emphasis  and  larger  realization  of  cer- 
tain elements  already  in  personality.  To  such  a 
view,  our  present  life  may  become  the  embryo  of 
eternal  life. 

The  really  practical  matter  before  the  church, 
however,  is  not  so  much  a  philosophy  of  immortality, 
however  important  that  may  be,  as  the  recalling  of 
the  men  of  a  materialistic  age  to  a  sense  of  their 
spiritual  importance.  Immortality  is  not  the  only 
basis  for  morahty,  but  it  should  be  made  in  some 
rational  way  a  motive  for  morality.  In  a  profound 
sense  the  gospel  must  become  to-day  an  eschatologi- 
cal  message.  Its  central  fact  is  the  concrete  argu- 
ment for  the  immortal  worth  of  a  Christlike  man 
seen  in  the  resurrection  of  Jesus.  It  is  possible 
and,  in  the  interest  of  morality,  imperative  that  these 
elements  of  the  gospel  be  combined  with  what  we 
know  of  life  and  its  tendencies  and  thus  made  to 
serve  the  interests  of  an  ethical  appeal.  It  is  the 
business  of  the  Christian  church  to  rationalize  the 
appeal  of  immortal  life  and  to  make  it  something 
more  than  a  naive  exploiting  of  physical  fear  and 
hope ;  to  extend  it  to  all  social  relations.  He  would 
be  untrue  to  the  gospel  who  would  insist  that  a  man 
ought  to  be  good  in  order  that  God  may  at  some 


8o   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

future  time  arbitrarily  assign  him  a  share  in  the  bliss 
of  heaven.  The  Christian  can  make  no  appeal  to 
a  Mohammedan  paradise,  however  transcendental 
it  may  make  its  feasts  and  its  houris.  The  appeal 
which  the  church  must  make  is  rather  the  appeal 
of  a  spiritual  physician  to  men  who  are  diseased. 
In  the  interest  of  their  personal  welfare  it  must  urge 
upon  them  a  hygiene  of  the  soul,  and  in  the  name  of 
the  Master  and  with  the  conviction  bom  of  our  knowl- 
edge of  his  life  and  resurrection  urge  them  to  give 
freest  expression  to  the  eternal  life  in  social  love 
and  service  rather  than  to  the  merely  animalistic 
life  in  selfish  indulgence  and  strife.  Its  ethical 
appeal  should  be  based  upon  the  teleological  value 
of  personality.  If  we  do  not  believe  that  the  self 
has  immortality,  our  ethical  appeal  will  be  little 
better  than  poetical  exhortation  or  sociaUstic  utili- 
tarianism. If  like  Jesus  and  the  apostles  we  do 
possess  that  conviction,  we  shall  find  a  new  grip 
in  our  ethical  conceptions,  a  new  enthusiasm  for 
religious  uplift,  and  a  new  motive  to  sacrifice  in  the 
interest  of  social  fraternity.  For  the  eternal  life 
of  which  Jesus  spoke  and  which  he  revealed  His 
more  than  mere  continued  existence.  It  is  the 
present  life  of  God  within  the  human  soul  —  death- 
less because  He  is  deathless. 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  GOSPEL  8l 

IV 

How  shall  we  preach  this  gospel  of  the  risen  Christ 
and  of  the  eternal  life? 

I.  Above  all  else,  positively,  with  a  contagious 
conviction.  A  man  will  neither  fear  nor  love  a 
God  under  investigation. 

With  the  passion  of  moral  physicians  who  know 
that  sin  is  a  deadly  curse  —  not  a  term  of  the  school- 
man. 

And,  up  to  the  utmost  limit  of  our  convictions, 
with  an  emphasis  upon  both  its  experiential  and 
its  historical  elements. 

To  appreciate  the  evangelic  significance  of  the 
life  and  teachings  of  Jesus  it  is  necessary  to  centre 
one's  attention  steadily  upon  his  individuality  as 
affected  by  historical  environment,  upon  his  own 
Messianic  self-estimate,  and  upon  the  Messianic 
interpretation  given  him  by  his  followers.  The 
terminology  of  these  estimates,  age-product  though 
it  was,  helps  us  appreciate  the  real  personality  that 
compelled  the  Messianic  valuation.  Integral  in 
this  must  be  the  fact  of  his  resurrection  as  it  is  ex- 
pounded by  Paul.  According  to  Paul  and  the  Acts, 
the  resurrection  did  not  make  Jesus  the  Messiah, 
but  it  showed  that  be  was  the  Messiah.    He  was  the 

Q 


82   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

Christ  while  he  was  preaching  by  the  side  of  the  lake, 
but  the  crowning  evidence  of  the  fact  did  not  ap- 
pear until  after  Calvary.  More  distinctly :  the  life 
of  Jesus  is  a  part  of  the  gospel  because  it  shows  the 
content  of  the  eternal  life  —  that  is,  it  shows  how 
the  divine  life  would  appear  under  certain  recog- 
nizable historical  conditions  in  terms  of  loving 
service  to  the  bodies  and  the  souls  of  men. 

2.  This  insistence  upon  the  historical  elements 
of  the  gospel  carries  with  it  the  necessity  of  distin- 
guishing sharply  between  the  evangelic  facts  and 
the  interpretation  given  them  by  the  people  of  the 
first  century.  It  is  the  first  duty  of  the  constructive 
theologian,  and  of  the  preacher  as  well,  to  make  this 
distinction.  Many  of  the  interpretative  concepts 
by  which  the  gospel  was  exhibited  to  men  of  the 
first  century  are  outgrown.  It  is  not  that  they  were 
necessarily  false,  but  that  they  are  interpretations 
and  naturally  stand  in  a  different  category  from  the 
facts  with  which  they  deal. 

There  is,  for  example,  the  conception  of  the  demons 
as  causing  certain  forms  and  in  fact  nearly  all  forms 
of  disease.  We  find  it  running  through  the  entire 
ancient  world.  But  the  New  Testament  concept  of 
demoniacal  possessions  is  not  a  part  of  the  gospel. 
It  is  a  contribution  to  historical  pathology.     Simi- 


THE   CHURCH   AND  THE   GOSPEL  83 

larly  in  the  case  of  the  use  by  the  New  Testament 
writers  of  the  idea  of  a  flat  earth  and  superimposed 
heavens ;  of  an  underworld  for  the  dead ;  of  angelic 
powers  and  principalities;  of  the  heavenly  Jerusa- 
lem and  the  lake  of  fire.  Such  beliefs  are  not  the 
gospel  but  ideas  that  conditioned  the  first  preaching 
of  the  gospel. 

So,  too,  in  the  matter  of  apocalyptic  eschatology. 
The  cosmology  of  those  who  know  that  the  earth 
is  round  is  radically  different  from  that  of  those 
who  described  the  coming  of  Christ  in  terms  which 
imply  that  the  earth  is  flat.  But  cosmology,  though 
a  necessary  part  of  a  man's  intellectual  equipment, 
is  not  a  necessary  subject  of  preaching.  Like  these 
other  matters  it  lies  within  the  region  of  the  inter- 
pretative concept  and  is  not  one  of  the  elements 
of  the  gospel  itself.  Messianism,  finally,  is  a  sur- 
vival of  Judaism,  and  its  influence  and  implications 
must  be  removed  before  we  see  the  essential  ele- 
ments of  the  gospel. 

3.  The  facts  of  the  gospel  are  to  be  preached,  but 
they  are  to  be  preached  in  such  thought  forms  and 
in  such  vocabularies  as  will  make  them  efiicacious 
with  the  people  whom  the  church  to-day  addresses, 
not  with  the  people  who  wrote  the  New  Testament. 
We  do  not  need  to  be  citizens  of  the  Graeco-Roman 


'/ 


ry 


84   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

world  in  order  to  be  Christians.  We  can  and  must 
be  citizens  of  our  own  new  age.  Our  thought 
forms  must  be  those  of  to-day's  thinking. 

For  after  allowance  has  been  made  for  these  con- 
cepts of  a  prescientific  age,  the  facts  of  the  gospel 
themselves  can  be  reinterpreted.  And  this  inter- 
pretation will  be  found  in  a  translated  Paulinism. 

We  all  have  undoubtedly  a  large  amount  of  sym- 
pathy with  the  cry  of  "Back  to  Christ,"  or  as  some 
would  have  it,  "Forward  to  Christ."  There  are 
probably  few  thoughtful  Christians  who  do  not  feel 
that  vital  Christianity  has  suffered  somewhat  at  the 
hands  of  those  who  have  attempted  to  reduce  its 
truths  to  great  systems.  But  I  cannot  share  in  the 
more  or  less  general  revolt  from  Paul.  I  have  a 
feeling  that  when  a  man  belittles  Paul,  he  shows  that 
he  does  not  understand  Paul.  True,  the  apostle  in 
many  places  thinks  in  ways  it  is  difficult  to  follow; 
but  for  a  man  who  takes  the  Pauline  point  of  view, 
Paulinism  is  an  open  book.  And  I  venture  to  say 
that  any  man  who  seeks  to  get  back  to  Christ  will 
find,  if  he  looks  about  him,  that  at  every  step  he 
takes  toward  the  Master  he  will  find  ahead  of  him 
the  guiding  footsteps  of  this  same  Paul.  No  man 
ever  understood  Jesus  as  did  the  apostle  to  the  Gen- 
tiles;  no  man  ever  equalled  Paul  in  grasping  the 


THE   CHURCH   AND  THE   GOSPEL  85 

capacity  of  the  fact  of  the  dead  and  risen  Christ  to 
help  one  solve  the  problems  of  death  and  sin,  of 
immortality  and  righteousness,  and  above  all  that 
deepest  of  all  questions:  Is  the  universe  run  by- 
heartless  law  or  by  love  ?  It  is  true  we  do  not  think 
of  God  in  the  forensic  fashion,  but  Paul's  doctrine 
of  justification  by  faith,  much  as  it  turned  about  the 
forensic  figure,  has  in  it  eternal  truth.  We  may 
conceive  of  righteousness  to-day  more  from  the  point 
of  view  of  spiritual  hygiene  than  from  that  of  the 
law  court,  but  any  man  will  take  many  an  unneces- 
sary step  toward  evangelical  truth  who  does  not 
first  master  the  Pauline  concepts  of  the  atonement 
and  acquittal  and  then  express  these  great  teachings 
in  terms  which  will  do  for  our  day  what  the  forensic 
conception  did  for  his  day. 

There  are  two  great  foci  in  the  evangelic  thought 
of  Paul.  The  one  is  the  fact  of  the  historical,  risen 
Jesus  and  the  other  is  the  experience  of  God.  From 
these  two  foci  his  penetrating  intellect  swings  with 
magnificent  sweep  around  the  entire  ellipse  of  reli- 
gious thinking.  The  man  who  would  preach  the 
gospel  to-day  must  bring  these  two  facts  to  the  solu- 
tion of  the  precise  problems  which  Paul  himself 
confronted,  viz. :  the  way  of  approach  for  an  un- 
clean soul  to  a  forgiving  God,  that  is  faith  in  Jesus 


86   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

Christ;  the  possibility  and  certainty  of  moral  ad- 
vance toward  the  ideal  set  by  Jesus,  that  is  sancti- 
fication  through  the  indwelling  spirit;  the  place  of 
Jesus  in  the  cosmic  purpose  of  God,  that  is  the  atone- 
ment; the  physiological-psychological  outcome  of 
death  in  the  case  of  the  life  in  the  spirit,  that  is  the 
body  of  the  resurrection ;  the  unity  of  believers,  that 
is  the  new  social  order.  Within  these  and  the  sub- 
sidiary doctrines  which  they  involve  will  be  found 
the  sphere  of  the  positive  and  effective  preaching  of 
the  historical  gospel. 

V 

It  is  possible  that  this  insistence  upon  facts  and 
particularly  upon  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  as  essen- 
tial elements  in  an  evangelical  message  may  appear 
to  preclude  the  preaching  of  the  gospel  by  those  who 
do  not  possess  a  similar  confidence  in  the  reliability 
of  our  historic  records.  For  there  are  many  who 
have  come  to  distrust  the  scientific  worth  of  the  apos- 
tolic testimony  to  the  resurrection  and  feel  that  it  is 
impossible  at  this  distance  to  distinguish  between 
actual  occurrences  and  the  faith  of  the  first  evan- 
gelists. 

Two  things  may  plainly  be  said  to  such  persons: 
first,   by   way   of   repetition.      Any   theology   that 


THE   CHURCH  AND   THE   GOSPEL  87 

is  unaffected  by  a  conviction  of  the  reality  of  the 
risen  Christ  is  not  evangelical  in  the  strictly  New 
Testament  sense.  Conceivably  such  a  theology 
may  be  true ;  conceivably  as  far  as  other  doctrines 
go  it  may  be  in  accord  with  the  traditional  ortho- 
doxy. But  just  because  it  fails  to  embody  in  itself 
the  triumphant  note  of  the  resurrection  it  is  some- 
thing different  from  the  gospel  as  it  is  presented  in 
the  New  Testament. 

But  secondly  it  should  be  said  that  some  men 
reach  this  conviction  as  to  the  risen  Christ  by  the 
way  of  Christian  experience  rather  than  by  the  way 
of  historical  criticism.  To  such  a  person  the  his- 
torical argument  may  bring  no  assurance  of  the 
trustworthiness  of  the  New  Testament  records, 
but  he  believes  with  all  his  soul  that  Jesus'  life  upon 
earth  was  so  divine  that  it  was  indubitably  consum- 
mated in  the  glorious  life  of  heaven ;  that  Jesus  to-day 
lives  beyond  a  shadow  of  doubt ;  that  is  to  say,  he 
believes  in  a  risen  Christ  without  believing  in  the 
events  of  the  first  Easter  Day  or  in  the  objective 
character  of  the  appearances  of  Jesus  to  Paul  and 
the  other  apostles. 

Is  such  a  man  excluded  from  preaching  the  gospel 
of  salvation  from  sin  and  death?  Assuredly  not. 
He,  too,  can  bring  and  must  bring  his  conviction  of 


88   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

the  continued  life  of  Jesus  to  bear  upon  men  and 
women.  To  my  mind  in  refusing  to  make  the  testi- 
mony of  Paul  and  the  apostles  an  aid  to  religious 
faith  because  he  beheves  it  cannot  be  verified,  he  has 
lost  something  exceedingly  valuable  from  his  message. 
But  if  he  actually  preaches  the  gospel  of  eternal  life, 
his  is  an  evangelic  message.  For  it  rises  above 
moral  exhortation  and  sees  in  the  historical  Jesus 
an  actual  faith-compelling  revelation  of  a  God  who 
saves  from  sin  and  death  those  who  trust  themselves 
to  Him  as  Jesus  trusted  himself  to  Him.  Whatever 
are  the  means  by  which  a  man  gains  this  conviction, 
whatever  may  be  the  means  by  which  he  refuses  to 
gain  it,  the  conviction  is  indubitably  his. 

But  to  him  as  to  the  man  who  has  fuller  confidence 
in  the  New  Testament  records  such  a  conviction 
must  be  no  mere  appendix  to  a  theological  system. 
It  must  permeate  and  control  his  thinking.  It 
must  make  him  feel  a  horror  of  sin  and  its  conse- 
quences. It  must  teach  him  the  hopelessness  of  a 
life  without  God.  Above  all  it  must  dominate  his 
estimate  of  the  worth  of  a  human  soul  and  of  the 
fatherliness  of  the  God  of  the  universe  and  inflame 
his  ambition  to  bring  men  to  God  that  they  may 
be  saved  for  two  worlds. 

It  may  also  possibly  have  occurred  to  my  readers 


THE   CHURCH  AND  THE   GOSPEL  89 

that  this  insistence  upon  the  preaching  of  the 
gospel  as  nearly  as  possible  in  its  New  Testament 
sense  is  in  many  ways  more  like  the  evangehstic 
message  preached  a  generation  or  so  ago  than 
that  which  has  been  considered  the  progressive 
orthodoxy  of  the  last  generation.  I  am  free  to 
admit  it.  A  theology  may  be  hberal  and  scientific 
and  not  be  unevangelical.  The  history  of  Christian 
thought  cannot  be  wholly  a  history  of  mistakes. 
The  fact  that  historical  criticism  and  the  acceptance 
of  the  methods  and  results  of  biological  science  bring 
one  back  with  new  confidence  to  the  heart  of  an 
historic  faith,  though  by  the  road  of  a  somewhat 
radical  methodology,  is  at  once  reassuring  and 
eloquent  as  to  the  future.  There  are  many  points 
both  in  conclusions  and  in  method  at  which  there  will 
always  be  honest  difference  of  opinion,  but  whatever 
is  a  fact  will  finally  be  reached  by  any  legitimate 
investigation. 

In  this  loyalty  to  the  gospel  lies  the  hope  of  the 
church.  Outside  of  it  is  suicidal  division.  I  can- 
not see  in  ethical  teaching,  pure  and  simple,  whether 
it  be  in  ethical  culture  societies,  or  in  evangelical 
pulpits,  any  greater  hope  than  in  a  hopelessly  out- 
grown literalism  and  anti-scientific  conservatism. 
But  I  can  see  a  magnificent  future  for  that  preaching 


90      THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   CH.\NGING   ORDER 

which  dares  bring  the  data  of  the  gospel  of  Jesus, 
however  it  may  gain  them,  into  fellowship  with  the 
facts  of  natural  science ;  which  interprets  them  in 
the  terms  and  concepts  of  the  men  of  to-day  just  as 
Paul  and  Calvin  interpreted  them  in  the  terms  and 
concepts  of  their  day;  and  which  makes  them  the 
foundation  for  an  estimate  of  the  immortal  worth  of 
men  and  for  the  consequent  gospel  of  brotherhood. 
This,  and  not  a  metaphysical  theology,  nescient  or 
omniscient,  is  the  evangelical  message  for  which 
the  church,  whether  conservative  or  liberal,  friendly 
to  criticism  or  hostile  to  critics,  can  stand  and  must 
stand. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BROTHERHOOD 

The  church  can  prepare  men  for  heaven  only  by 
teaching  them  how  to  live  upon  the  earth.  The 
gospel  of  the  risen  Christ  is  also  the  gospel  of  re- 
generate men  building  the  eternal  life  into  a  frater- 
nity that  must  some  day  include  all  social  rela- 
tions. For  the  heart  of  eternal  life  is  aggressive, 
privilege-sacrificing  love  like  that  of  Jesus  himself. 

To  many  men  the  faith  in  an  abiding  social  peace\ 
grows  hardly  more  than  a  dream  and  a  wish.  Prog- 
ress, so  far  as  social  solidarity  is  concerned,  seems 
leading  for  the  moment  to  a  cul-de-sac  walled  in 
by  contradictions  of  its  own  making.  Human  life 
has  passed  from  savagery,  where  that  man  was  safest 
who  was  most  alone,  to  the  present  chaos  of  rela- 
tionships. Never  was  the  division  of  labor  so  minute 
and  cooperation  so  imperative.  Never  was  power 
more  synonymous  with  dependence.  Never  was 
a  theoretical  democracy  more  in  evidence.  And 
yet  from  its  evolution  the  social  universe  has  not  ^  ^,- 
yet  emerged.    The  division  of  labor  has  not  grow^^' 

91 


92   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

cooperative ;  democracy  was  never  more  in  need  of 
guidance;  social  classes  were  never  more  sensitive 
to  each  other's  prerogatives;  the  interests  of  the 
individual  are  not  yet  always  those  of  society; 
education  has  not  yet  taught  our  children  the  art 
of  living  together  as  men;  the  church  has  not  yet 
brought  about  the  kingdom  of  God. 
^  To  offset  this  disintegrating  force,  to  what  shall 
we. look?  Economic  cooperation,  the  brute  forces 
of  army  or  police,  foreign  war,  and  socialism  have 
had  their  champions,  and  to  a  greater  or  less  degree 
each  has  been  tried  in  actual  life.  Yet,  so  far  as 
we  can  judge,  the  question  still  awaits  an  answer, 
and  it  must  continue  to  wait  until  a  basis  be  found  in 
some  fundamental  human  relationship  so  indepen- 
dent of  the  accidents  of  life  as  to  be  capable  of 
appealing  to  all  men  everywhere  and  inciting  them 
to  greater  efforts  for  themselves  and  a  more  spon- 
taneous recognition  of  the  rights  of  others. 

It  is  not  at  all  certain  that  any  single  basis  of  this 
sort  will  ever  be  found.  Life  is  so  complicated  that 
perhaps  social  unity  is  as  visionary  as  the  fountain 
of  life.  But  one  thing  stands  true :  whatever  power 
there  may  lie  in  other  aspects  of  human  life,  even  a 
partial  social  unity  will  be  but  a  dream  to  the  man 
who  shuts  his  eyes  to  religion  and  God.     Despite 


CHURCH  AND   THE   GOSPEL   OF   BROTHERHOOD      93 

one's  own  doubts  and  the  apathy  of  organized  Chris- 
tianity in  social  reform,  wherever  there  is  to  be  a 
bundle  of  lives  in  which  the  humblest  man  and 
woman  shall  be  physically  and  morally  safe,  there 
must  also  be  the  all-embracing  eternal  life  of  the 
gospel.  And  in  occidental  society,  at  least,  this 
means  that  the  Christian  church  has  a  distinct 
office  and  duty  to  perform  in  bringing  in  unity 
through  fraternity.    Will  it  face  this  duty? 


The  grounds  for  asking  this  sweeping  question 
are  two  facts:  first,  religion  has  to  do  with  powers 
and  instincts  that  are  not  acquired,  but  are  ele- 
mental and  common  to  all  men;  and,  second, 
Christianity,  if  true  to  the  gospel  of  Jesus,  makes 
men  incapable  of  isolated  life. 

I.  Religion  is  the  expression  of  an  elemental, 
common,  and  therefore  unifying  factor  of  human 
life. 

To  unite  men,  emphasis  must  be  laid  upon  inter- 
ests that  are  not  mere  accidents  or  accomphshments, 
but  common  to  all.  The  habits  of  the  man  of  wealth, 
his  very  necessities,  are  so  far  removed  from  the  habits, 
and  even  the  luxuries,  of  the  man  of  poverty  as  to 
constitute  a  genuine,  and  almost  insuperable,  wall 


94   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

of  separation.  To  insist  that  unity  can  be  made 
possible  for  a  people  by  teaching  them  to  obey  the 
laws  governing  the  time  for  dinner  and  the  proper 
style  of  clothes  and  the  literature  one  should  read, 
is  ridiculous.  No  people  has  ever  become  perma- 
nently unified  on  the  basis  of  customs  or  civilization. 
Customs  and  civilization  are  the  results  of  a  deeper 
something  in  life.  Nor  is  social  unity  to  be  found 
even  in  a  devotion  to  art.  Music,  painting,  sculp- 
ture, and  other  forms  of  an  essentially  aesthetic  life 
have  never  succeeded  in  building  up  a  united  so- 
ciety. Greece  with  its  arts  was  as  divided  as  Judea 
with  its  refusal  to  make  to  itself  a  graven  image. 
The  aesthetic  life  is  a  product,  not  a  source,  of  social 
conditions.  When  the  Romans  first  conquered 
Greece,  they  thought  they  should  have  a  knowledge 
of  Greek  music;  but  a  Greek  orchestra  only  bored 
the  conquerors,  until  a  centurion  divided  the  musi- 
cians into  two  bands  and  ordered  them,  as  they 
played,  to  advance  toward  each  other  as  if  in  bat- 
tle. When  once  this  was  done,  the  Romans  broke 
forth  in  loud  applause.  War  they  knew;  music 
they  could  appreciate  only  as  it  simulated  war. 

Perhaps  men  have  grown  less  frank  in  the  expres- 
sion of  their  opinions,  but,  inestimably  valuable  as  is 
art  in  all  its  forms,  social  millennia  will  never  spring 


CHURCH   AND   THE   GOSPEL   OF   BROTHERHOOD      95 

from  symphony  concerts  and  art  exhibitions.  Cul- 
ture is  too  much  a  matter  of  the  individual,  too  much 
an  acquisition.  The  great  elemental  things  in  life 
are,  always  have  been,  and  always  must  be,  the  basis 
of  united  social  action.  Within  the  physical  sphere, 
for  example,  there  is  the  passion  for  food.  A  nation 
rises  or  dies  as  one  man  if  starvation  be  upon  it. 
There  is  the  passion  for  fighting  —  inherited  from 
a  savage  past,  it  is  true,  but  something  which,  as 
almost  nothing  else,  links  men  together  with  unbreak- 
able bonds.  A  little  higher  is  the  elemental  desire  to 
acquire  property.  From  the  days  of  Tyre  and  Sidon 
this  desire  has  broken  across  geographical  wastes 
and  bound  people  of  different  races  together.  There 
is  hardly  a  stronger  bond  of  union  than  that  of  com- 
mercial interest,  and  commerce  rises  superior  even  to 
the  brutal  elemental  passion  for  war,  and  demands 
that  there  shall  be  arbitration  where  formerly  men 
rushed  headlong  into  battle. 

But  hunger  and  fighting  and  the  desire  for  prop- 
erty are  not  the  only  elements  of  human  life.  Be- 
sides them  and  above  them  there  are  such  things 
as  faith,  a  trust  in  some  power  outside  oneself,  the 
instinct  to  pray,  the  belief  that  in  some  way  the 
world  is  not  the  result  of  a  toss-up  of  chance,  and 
that,  once  made  by  a  God,  it  has  not  been  aban- 


96   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

doned  by  its  Creator.  Religious  instincts  are  as 
elemental  as  the  lust  for  blood.  They  are  not 
something  learned,  and  so  added  to  life.  Religion 
is  one  way  of  living.  This  was  one  of  the  messages 
of  Jesus :  to  be  religious  is  to  live  with  God  as  well 
as  with  men.  If  one  life  is  natural,  so  is  the  other. 
If  religion  is  one  way  of  living,  it  can  be  a  bond  of 
lives  in  so  far  as  it  calls  into  action  original  and 
essentially  human  elements.  Ignoring  all  questions 
as  to  the  relations  of  his  ancestors  with  his  tribal 
god,  the  savage  in  the  Pacific  islands  to-day  kneels 
at  the  altar  of  the  God  whose  first  messengers  he 
devoured.  The  man  of  culture  bows  before  God, 
hesitating,  perhaps,  to  assent  to  any  sharply  articu- 
lated theology,  yet  wishing  to  let  his  faith  find  expres- 
sion in  deeds,  if  not  in  words.  The  philosopher,  who 
more  than  any  other  man  appreciates  the  difficulties 
which  he  inherent  in  theistic  belief,  still  sees  in  re- 
ligion a  philosophy  of  the  whole  of  things,  and  can- 
not believe  in  anything  less  than  an  absolute  unity 
lying  back  of  all  sensible  variety.  The  root  of 
all  this  belief  in  each  class  of  men  is  undoubtedly 
the  same,  whatever  may  be  the  variety  in  its  expres- 
sion. Were  religion  the  luxury  of  the  rich  or  a 
necessity  of  the  poor,  it  would  be  far  otherwise, 
for  somewhere  the  instinct  would  disappear  with  the 


CHURCH  AND  THE   GOSPEL   OF   BROTHERHOOD      97 

death  of  creed,  and  awe  would  vanish  before  knowl- 
edge. But  as  the  call  to  war  leads  men  away  from 
the  accidents  of  life,  the  differences  of  business  and 
culture  and  station,  and  binds  millionnaire  and  pauper, 
clubman  and  cowboy,  into  a  regiment,  so  Christianity, 
if  only  it  is  true  to  religion,  can  call  men  from  busi- 
ness and  daily  routine  and  join  them  into  the  indivis- 
ible kingdom  of  God.  To  make  men  trust  God 
better  is  to  make  them  more  ready  to  trust  men  better. 
To  make  them  resemble  God  in  universality  of  in- 
terest is  to  make  them  more  companionable,  more 
eager  to  do  good,  less  eager  to  succeed  through 
oppression,  less  isolated  and  self-centred,  more 
intent  upon  performing  duties  than  upon  demand- 
ing rights.  If  men  are  God's  sons,  then  must  they 
be  each  other's  brothers. 

2.  But  such  a  statement  as  this  leads  us  directly 
to  the  position  of  Christianity.  It  is  fundamentally 
a  religion,  but  on  its  social  side  gains  its  great  cen- 
tripetal force  by  the  fraternal  instincts  which  it 
engenders  among  its  followers.  There  has  probably 
been  in  the  history  of  social  agitation  no  more  dy- 
namic thought  than  the  Christian  teaching  as  to 
the  divine  paternity  and  the  consequent  human 
brotherhood.  Epictetus  with  other  Stoics,  it  is 
true,  recognized  it,  but  even  he  could  not  make  it 


98   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

dynamic.  Christianity  itself  for  hundreds  of  years 
failed  equally.  But  just  as  the  heart  of  the  strict 
Calvinist  rebelled  at  his  logic  when  it  came  to  the 
fate  of  children  who  died  in  infancy,  so  in  the  same 
proportion  as  the  interest  in  Christianity  has  swung 
from  metaphysics  to  its  real  content  has  the  recog- 
nition of  a  common  humanity  and  a  universal  obli- 
gation of  the  more  privileged  to  the  less  privileged 
found  expression  in  the  thought  of  humanity's 
sonship  to  God.  It  is  true  that  in  support  of  this 
doctrine  men  have  often  been  exegetically  at  fault. 
Jesus  himself  does  not  seem  to  use  the  parental 
analogy  to  express  the  universal  relationships  of 
God;  but  that  which  we  mean  by  the  fatherhood 
of  God  and  the  brotherhood  of  man  lies  in  the 
very  heart  of  his  teaching  as  to  eternal  life  and 
the  kingdom  of  God,  and  no  man  can  be  said 
to  have  found  the  centre  of  Christianity  who  does 
not  find  his  life  regulated  and  inspired  by  the  thought 
for  which,  whether  accurately  or  inaccurately,  the 
words  stand  to-day. 

But,  further,  the  individual  Christian,  if  he  ap- 
proach the  ideal  of  Jesus  and  Paul,  is  being  made  into 
a  man  who  cannot  live  an  isolated  life.  According 
to  the  conception  of  Jesus,  to  be  religious  is  not  to 
depend  upon  external  authority,  to  limit  one's  think- 


CHURCH  AND  THE    GOSPEL   OF   BROTHERHOOD        99 

ing,  to  perform  certain  duties,  to  practise  protracted 
deprivation,  and  to  narrow  one's  interests  and  life. 
On  the  contrary,  in  his  own  words,  it  is  to  have  life, 
and  have  it  more  abundantly.  Whatever  help  there 
may  be  in  religious  rules  and  regulations  he  rec- 
ognized, but,  according  to  his  conception,  to  live 
religiously  was  to  live  helpfully  with  men  because  one 
was  living  trustfully  with  God.  The  divine  life  in 
man  makes  altruism  instinctive.  Eternal  life,  what- 
ever it  may  be  in  heaven,  on  earth  is  a  life  of  spontan- 
eous service.  The  Christian  dynamic  is  a  faith  that 
finds  expression  in  love.  The  Christian  virtues  are 
not  those  of  the  hermit,  but  of  the  man  who  lives 
among  his  fellows  —  love,  joy,  endurance,  meekness, 
self-control,  trust-worthiness.  Not  one  of  these  is 
the  outgrowth  of  education  or  of  degradation,  of 
peculiarly  good  or  peculiarly  bad  environment. 

All  of  them  alike  are  the  expression  of  elemental 
religious  impulses  shared  by  all  men  and  obtaining 
reenforcement  and  energy  from  a  God  who  dwells 
with  all  men.  This  is  another  of  the  legacies  of 
Jesus:  a  selfish  man  cannot  be  religious.  To  the 
Christian  religion  is  the  Godward  expression  of  a 
equality  of  life  that  is  fraternal  in  its  manward  ex- 
pression. The  one  is  the  proof  of  the  other.  As  John 
asks,  How  dare  one  say  he  loves  God,  whom  he  has 


lOO      THE   CHURCH  AND   THE   CHANGING   ORDER 

not  seen,  when  he  fails  to  love  his  brother,  whom 
he  has  seen?  He  must  first  violate  his  Christian 
nature  who  seeks  his  own  things  rather  than  the 
things  of  others.  The  real  impulse,  the  greater  in- 
clination of  Christian  life,  is  outward.  Thus  com- 
munion with  God  is  possible  only  for  the  man  who 
is  living  a  life  of  supreme  social  service.  Divine 
forgiveness  is  conditioned,  according  to  Jesus,  upon 
a  man's  forgiving  his  enemies.  Just  as  a  man  can 
be  a  son  of  God  only  when  he  is  a  brother  of  his 
fellow-men,  so  the  better  Christian  a  man  is,  the  less 
aristocratic  and  the  more  fraternal  he  is. 

And  so  it  is  inevitable  that  as  a  community  is 
composed  of  men  whose  lives  are  filled  with  the 
spirit  of  Jesus,  it  will  be  bound  close  together.  If  one 
may  paraphrase  the  noble  saying  of  the  church  father, 
society,  like  man,  is  by  nature  Christian;  in  so  far 
as  it  is  un-Christian  it  is  unnatural  and  dangerous. 
An  irreligious  aristocracy  gave  France  the  miseries 
of  the  old  regime;  an  irreligious  proletariat  gave 
France  the  reign  of  terror;  an  irreligious  middle  class 
gave  France  the  massacre  of  the  communists;  an 
irreHgious  Republic  has  given  her  travesties  of 
justice  in  the  name  of  honor. 

But  genuine  religion  in  our  modem  world  is  not 
an  affair  of  a  community,  but  of  the  individuals 


CHURCH  AND  THE   GOSPEL   OF   BROTHERHOOD      lOI 

of  a  community.  And  if  it  be,  as  one  can  say  with- 
out cant,  that  many  of  society's  ills  to-day  spring 
from  irreligion,  to  cure  them  one  must  work  upon 
the  individual  life  as  well  as  the  social  environment* 
Regenerate  men  are  the  only  material  out  of  which 
to  construct  a  regenerate  society.  Panaceas  may 
look  more  fascinating,  are  almost  sure  to  be  more 
dramatic,  than  the  unheralded  production  of  Chris- 
tian character.  It  is  always  easy  to  leave  a  Christ 
bound  for  Calvary  for  the  untested  but  magnificent 
promises  of  a  Christ  in  the  wilderness.  But  there 
is  no  surer  way  toward  the  New  Jerusalem  than  the 
road  of  service  to  one's  fellows  made  possible  and 
heroic  by  an  overpowering  belief,  as  instinctive  as  it 
is  magnificent,  in  the  eternal  worth  of  humanity 
and  in  a  developing  providential  order  in  human 
society.  To  make  men  Christians  is  to  make  society 
fraternal.  Economic  oppression  must  vanish  from 
a  Christian  society  as  slavery  and  branding  van- 
ished. How  can  one  deliberately  "sweat"  a  soul 
possessed  of  immortal  destinies? 

II 

It  is  at  this  point  that  we  hear  the  call  to  the  Chris- 
tian church  to  fulfil  its  social  ofiice  as  an  embodiment 
of  religion  in  general  and  of  the  gospel  in  particular. 


102   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

It  must  awaken  in  men  instincts  which  are  common 
to  the  race,  and  induce  them  to  grow  into  the  likeness 
of  Jesus.  In  a  word,  it  must  exploit  and  exhibit 
the  social  content  of  eternal  life.  If  it  fulfils  this 
office,  it  is  as  essential  to  social  unity  as  is  the  school 
or  the  legislature.  If  it  fails  here,  it  fails  completely. 
But  its  method  must  be  its  own.  Unlike  government, 
it  furnishes  no  external  force  for  social  unity.  It 
must  stimulate  and  educate  the  social  instincts  in 
the  individual  life  by  appealing  to  the  moral  and 
religious  nature.  If  it  neglects  this  office,  it  fails 
of  performing  its  proper  functions  and  will  be  out- 
grown —  a  danger  which  is  not  unexpected  by  some 
serious  thinkers. 

The  nature  of  its  social  office  determines  the  ends 
by  which  the  church  must  work.  It  is  not  to  take 
the  place  of  the  school,  or  of  government,  or  of 
institutions  of  popular  amusement.  Its  work,  to  say 
the  very  least,  must  be  coordinate  with  that  of  these 
others,  but,  if  it  would  be  a  source  of  union  rather 
than  of  disintegration,  it  must  deal  with  those  ele- 
ments of  human  nature  that  find  expression  in 
religion. 

I.  It  must  appeal  to  and  stand  for  life,  not  phi- 
losophy. 

Christianity  has  always  been  marked  by  the  two 


CHURCH  AND   THE   GOSPEL   OF   BROTHERHOOD      I03 

tendencies  so  indispensable  for  every  evolutionary 
process.  On  the  one  hand,  it  has  been  a  cause  of 
disintegration  in  that  it  has  stimulated  men  to 
originality  and,  therefore,  difference  in  thought. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  has  tended  toward  unity  within 
the  region  of  common  religious  life.  The  most 
casual  knowledge  of  the  evolution  of  the  Christian 
centuries  corroborates  these  statements.  On  the 
one  hand  are  the  wars  of  the  theologians,  and  on  the 
other  that  beautiful  unity  of  Christian  spirit  which 
makes  it  possible  for  Christians  of  all  shades  of  belief 
to  use  the  hymns  and  litanies  of  those  with  whose 
teachings  they  differ. 

Unfortunately,  however,  the  Christian  church 
has  sometimes  attempted  to  make  the  disintegrating 
tendency  bring  about  unity.  It  has  appealed  to 
authority.  Practically  the  earliest  reference  to  the 
rise  of  an  autocratic  bishop  patristic  literature  has 
preserved  for  us  is  in  connection  with  the  preserva- 
tion of  correctness  in  doctrine.  The  great  Roman 
church  and  the  New  Testament  canon  are  the  results 
of  the  attempt  made  by  men  and  women  in  the  early 
Christian  centuries  to  bring  the  church  to  ortho- 
doxy. Protestantism,  although  originating  in  a 
revolt  against  coerced  uniformity,  and  often  over- 
emphasizing   Christian    individualism,    has    itself, 


I04   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

within  the  limits  of  separate  denominations,  too 
often  attempted  likewise  the  impossible  task  of  ac- 
complishing unity  by  an  authoritative  orthodoxy. 

The  result  of  all  these  efforts  to  reverse  the  natural 
workings  of  Christian  forces  has  ultimately  been 
failure.  No  reform  can  run  long  against  nature. 
Heresy,  like  the  church,  has  sprung  from  the  blood 
of  its  martyrs. 

But  coercion  is  an  anachronism.  We  are  getting 
to  understand  —  though  in  some  quarters  very 
slowly  —  that  a  man  who  differs  from  us  in  doctrine 
is  not  of  necessity  a  bad  and  blasphemous  man. 
In  proportion  as  each  denomination  recognizes  that 
its  work  is  not  to  force  men  to  pronounce  accurately 
some  shibboleth,  but  to  create  God-fearing,  man- 
loving,  honest  lives,  does  it  come  to  insist  upon  such 
teachings  as  are  bom  of  universal  Christian  ex- 
perience rather  than  of  disproportionate  emphasis 
upon  various  dogmas.  By  endeavoring  to  give  men 
more  abundant  life  rather  than  a  more  voluminous 
theology,  the  church  will  far  more  contribute  toward 
denominational  unity,  and  also  toward  a  magnificent 
Christian  unity  that  will  not  only  embrace  theological 
opponents,  but  bind  together  social  classes  as  well. 

For  the  church  to  attempt  to  save  society  by  a  phi- 
losophy made  over  into  a  theology — especially  if 


CHURCH  AND  THE   GOSPEL   OF   BROTHERHOOD      105 

that  philosophy  be  centuries  out  of  date  —  is  des- 
perate foolishness.  Theology,  indispensable  as  it  is, 
always  has  been  and  is  always  likely  to  be  a  disin- 
tegrating force  in  Protestantism.  To  simplify  the- 
ology is  to  help  unify  society.  With  all  the  stem 
realities  of  uncoordinated  social  life  pressing  in  upon 
Christian  people,  it  is  suicidal  to  waste  time  dis- 
cussing the  calculus  of  religion.  With  the  sanctity 
of  the  home  threatened  by  reckless  divorces  and  even 
more  reckless  marriages,  with  a  generation  polluted 
by  a  mania  for  gambling,  with  saloons  and  brothels 
at  its  door,  why  should  the  church  pause  to  manicure 
its  theology?  Facing  a  world  in  the  darkness  of 
heathenism,  a  submerged  tenth  rotting  in  our  cities, 
an  industrialism  that  is  more  murderous  than  war, 
why  should  the  church  stop  to  make  a  belief  in 
the  historicity  of  the  great  fish  of  Jonah  a  test  of 
fitness  for  cooperation  in  aggressive  evangelization? 
If  it  would  make  toward  fraternity,  the  appeal  of  the 
church  must  be  to  life;  and  so  far  as  social  signifi- 
cance goes,  the  church  that  does  not  make  this  appeal 
is  dead  while  it  lives. 

And  what  is  true  of  religious  philosophy  is  just 
as  true  of  other  causes  of  divisions.  Church  mem- 
bers may  hold  different  opinions  as  to  socialism, 
monarchy,   trusts,    prohibition,    evolution,    and   a 


Io6      THE   CHURCH  AND  THE   CHANGING   ORDER 

thousand  other  things,  but  a  church  as  a  social 
institution  is  concerned  with  none  of  them.  It  must 
educate  its  members  in  the  principles  governing 
Christian  conduct;  it  must  inspire  men  to  value 
men  as  Jesus  valued  them  in  the  light  of  an  impending 
eternity;  it  must  teach  them  to  do  right  by  society 
at  any  cost ;  it  must  bring  them  into  vital  relationship 
with  God,  that  their  lives  may  get  something  of  the 
divine  expansion ;  and  then  it  must  trust  them  to  act 
freely  as  their  own  intelligence  and  judgment  dictate. 
As  matters  are  to-day,  with  moral  and  religious 
teaching  barred  from  the  schools,  with  the  state 
rightly  but  unfortunately  held  to  be  unconcerned 
with  religion,  with  colleges  and  universities  increas- 
ingly emphasizing  learning  and  method  rather  than 
moral  discipline,  this  educative,  coordinating  work 
of  the  Christian  church  is  imperative.  Its  attitude 
here  is  critical  not  alone  for  itself  but  for  society. 
It  alone  can  devote  itself  to  that  side  of  the  elemental 
humanity  which  religion  represents.  If  it  fails  in 
its  duty  here,  not  only  will  individual  lives  grow 
poorer  because  imperfectly  developed,  but  the  whole 
structure  of  society  will  suffer.  The  most  sceptical 
and  most  irreligious  of  statesmen  have  recognized 
the  truth  of  this  statement,  and,  however  much  they 
may  have  judged  their  own  lives  superior  to  the  need 


CHURCH  AND  THE   GOSPEL   OF   BROTHERHOOD      I07 

of  the  religious  motive,  they  have  been  anxious  to 
maintain  the  church  as  an  institution  for  the  masses. 
But  the  church  is  something  more  than  a  deus  ex 
machina,  and  preaching  is  something  more  than  a 
terrifying  of  the  masses  into  social  order  and  decency 
by  an  appeal  to  their  fear  of  hell.  Religion,  as  a 
constituent  element  in  human  life,  if  developed  along 
the  lines  indicated  by  a  real  gosjjel,  produces  men 
who  will  constitute  the  better  environment  for  which 
all  sociologists  plead.  The  eternal  life,  which  is 
the  gift  of  Jesus,  is  inherently  social.  It  cannot  be 
egoistic.  I  do  not  mean  merely  that  Christians 
will  be  active  in  seeing  that  reforms  come  to  pass. 
Many  Christian  people  are  thus  active,  despite 
the  apathy  of  certain  of  their  number  and  the  laments 
of  certain  men  whose  zeal  has  made  them  as  unfair 
as  pessimistic.  Besides  such  assistance  rendered 
by  Christian  people,  each  individual  church  has  a 
definite  social  task  to  perform.  It  is  an  institution 
of  its  neighborhood,  and  as  the  world  with  Christ 
in  it  is  a  different  thing  from  the  world  with  Christ 
out  of  it,  so  a  community,  a  ward,  a  neighborhood 
possessing  a  genuine  church,  is  better  than  it  could 
possibly  be  without  such  a  church.  Social  environ- 
ment and  public  opinion  are  only  other  names  for 
men  and  women.    As  men  and  women  grow  purer 


Io8   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

and  more  generous,  and  their  virtues  get  socialized 
in  some  institution,  social  environment  and  public 
opinion  must  improve.  It  is  here  that  the  local 
church  becomes  of  social  importance.  It  not  only 
can  produce  Christian  people,  but,  if  it  is  properly 
performing  its  duty,  it  can  coordinate  and  socialize 
their  influence. 

But  it  must  work  out  from  life  —  eternal  life. 
It  cannot  socialize  orthodoxy  or  heterodoxy.  That 
is  an  affair  of  each  individual  soul.  And  if  the  church 
has  to  do  with  life,  then  it  must  be  ready  to  coordi- 
nate all  the  aspects  of  life.  There  is  a  Christianity 
outside  the  church;  there  are  customs  and  insti- 
tutions made  necessary  by  the  course  of  social  de- 
velopment; there  are  other  virtues  than  the  eccle- 
siastical. All  these  must  be  preserved,  not  destroyed. 
Jesus  gave  much  of  his  teaching  at  dinners.  Shall 
the  ideal  of  the  church  be  asceticism,  which  is  but 
another  word  for  social  disintegration?  Paul 
preached  as  he  worked  at  his  trade.  Shall  the 
Christian  be  taught  that  Ufe  can  be  spUt  into  religion 
and  business?  Jesus  had  pity  upon  the  hungry. 
Shall  a  church  neglect  the  poor  in  its  region  —  or  in 
any  region?  Jesus  gave  men  that  which  was  better 
than  what  he  destroyed.  Shall  church  members 
vote  away  the  saloon  and  give  the  poor  man  nothing 


CHTJRCH  AND   THE   GOSPEL   OF   BROTHERHOOD      109 

better  in  its  place  ?  This  does  not  make  it  necessary 
or  desirable  for  a  church  to  identify  itself  with  any 
special  political  reform.  That  is  not  the  function  of 
a  church,  but  of  church  members.  Let  the  church 
cease  to  be  a  theological  lectureship,  and,  without 
puzzling  men  with  strange  theologies  and  stranger 
class  sympathies,  train  them  to  express  the  ideals  by 
the  gospel  in  Christian  living,  and  under  the  guid- 
ance of  God  they  will  be  able  as  individual  citizens 
to  devise  wise  means  by  which  social  institutions  and 
economic  conditions  and  political  machinery  shall 
so  embody  the  Christian  spirit  as  shall  make  a 
Christian  society  less  a  matter  of  rhetoric,  and  Chris- 
tian hving  easier  for  all  classes.  The  great  dynamic 
of  a  society  as  it  advances  toward  a  real,  a  world- 
wide fraternity  will  be  a  public  opinion  surcharged 
with  the  ideals  of  the  gospel. 

This  is  not  to  say  that  the  unity  which  thus  the 
church  is  to  assist  in  producing  will  be  absolute 
uniformity.  Absolute  similarity  in  work  and  char- 
acter is  impossible  so  long  as  society  does  not  return 
to  primitive  savagery.  Christianity  and  Christian 
fellowship  are  not  identical  with  an  immediate  aboli- 
tion of  social  classes.  In  the  present  stage  of  human 
development  it  is  a  part  of  human  nature  for  men  and 
women  of  similar  instincts  and  occupations  to  seg- 


no   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

regate.  Only  the  anarchist  plans  to  destroy  social 
organization,  and  even  he  expects  that  after  it 
has  been  thoroughly  disintegrated,  its  individuals 
will  recombine  in  other  and,  as  he  believes,  better 
groups.  An  army  is  a  unity,  but  its  very  unity 
is  a  matter  of  organization.  The  spirit  of  Chris- 
tianity is  not  that  of  individualism  gone  mad.  What 
it  will  accomplish  will  be,  not  the  destruction  of  social 
organization,  but  a  social  unity  in  which  inevitable 
economic  and  even  social  differentiation  will  be 
complemented  by  oneness  in  spirit.  Economic 
classes  may  remain,  but  social  hatreds  must  dis- 
appear. Nations  may  remain,  but  war  must 
cease. 

Utopian  as  this  may  seem  to  a  society  in  which 
competition  has  not  yet  succumbed  to  solidarity 
of  interest  and  the  spirit  of  Christian  fellowship, 
the  time  must  come  when  in  some  way  or  other,  either 
with  or  without  revolution,  wealth  and  poverty, 
learning  and  ignorance,  as  well  as  all  other  accidental 
differences,  will  cease  to  divide  men  and  prevent  the 
growth  of  human  fraternity.  What  society  under 
such  conditions  will  then  resemble,  no  man  can  proph- 
esy. Perhaps  these  differences  themselves  may  have 
been  largely  abolished,  although  it  is  not  clear  that 
the  ideal  will  be  reached  by  any  socialistic  pro- 


CHURCH   AND  THE   GOSPEL   OF   BROTHERHOOD      III 

gramme.  But,  however  or  whenever  attained,  Chris- 
tianity must  have  a  large  share  in  its  accomplishment. 
Social  unity  is  a  fellowship  in  life,  not  in  opinion  or 
vocation,  and  nowhere  can  human  lives  so  readily, 
so  finally,  enter  into  fellowship  as  before  the  altar 
of  a  God  who  has  been  revealed  as  Father  by  a  Son 
of  Man. 

Will  the  church  consent  to  rise  from  the  divisive 
quest  for  orthodoxy  to  the  unifying  message  of  fra- 
ternity born  of  the  gospel?  To  do  anything  else 
is  to  misinterpret  that  gospel  and  to  be  untrue  to  the 
Life  brought  to  light  by  Jesus. 

2.  And  this  brings  us  to  the  heart  of  the  whole 
matter,  as  far  as  the  church  is  concerned.  It  must 
bring  society  and  God  together.  God  is  the  cor- 
relative of  religion.  One  cannot  develop,  or  even 
appeal  to,  the  religious  instincts  of  mankind  sanely 
or  healthfully  except  by  showing  how  they  may  find 
satisfaction  in  his  God.  To  attempt  to  satisfy  a 
religious  longing  by  a  phrase  or  by  a  philosophy  or  by 
high-class  amusements  is  to  give  men  a  stone  when 
they  have  asked  for  bread.  The  church  is  something 
more  than  one  among  many  social  institutions.  It  is 
society's  priest.  It  mediates  God  to  a  race  that  can, 
but  does  not,  worship.  If  religion  is  to  play  any  part 
in  the  accomplishment  of  social  unity,  God  must  be 


112   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

treated  seriously,  and  men  must  be  bound  together 
by  being  bound  to  him. 

Religious  thought  has  lately  been  marked  by  an 
insistence  upon  the  immanence  of  God  in  nature. 
Whereas  he  was  once  thought  of  as  transcendent, 
and  to  be  brought  over  into  nature  only  through 
some  bold  anthropomorphism,  we  are  now  getting 
glimpses  of  a  God  who  is  always  with  us,  whose  will 
does  not  push  the  planets  in  their  courses,  but  who 
is  in  some  true  sense  force  itself.  It  is  hard  to 
believe  that  such  a  philosophy  any  more  than  any 
other  exhausts  reality,  and  it  is  not  yet  demon- 
strable that  God  and  matter  are  the  same  substance. 
But  this  new  thought  of  God  satisfies  the  religious 
wants,  and  the  unimaginable  stretch  of  space  seems 
less  fearful  as  one  thinks  that  God  is  present  wher- 
ever his  will  acts. 

But  for  the  church,  men  and  women  are  more  im- 
portant than  the  stars.  Dare  we  think  that  God 
is  as  much  in  humanity  as  in  heavenly  space?  If 
the  thunder  is  still  his  voice,  can  that  voice  also  be 
heard  in  the  succession  of  empires,  the  rise  of  social 
classes,  the  whole  sweep  of  social  evolution?  Or  is 
God  only  a  convenient  name  for  the  subliminal  self 
and  the  social  mind,  and  is  the  materialism  which 
in  physical  science  is  passing  from  atheism  to  agnos- 


CHURCH  AND   THE   GOSPEL   OF   BROTHERHOOD      II3 

ticism  to  be  intrenched  in  psychology  and  sociology  ? 

All  the  logic  of  the  schools  cannot  prevent  a  theist 
from  believing  that  if  God  be  in  nature,  He  must  also 
be  in  humanity ;  that  whatever  He  be  in  one  part  of 
His  universe,  that  He  must  be  in  another;  that  He 
who  keeps  the  universe  from  tumbling  into  chaos  is 
also  watching  over  every  Zion  and  keeping  every 
Israel. 

Nor  can  such  a  God  care  only  for  politics.  Shall 
he  be  a  God  of  armies  and  not  a  God  of  labor  unions 
and  of  corporations?  Shall  he  be  a  God  of  battle 
and  not  a  God  of  strikes  ?  And  if  no  such  distinction 
is  possible,  then  the  man  who  prayed  for  victory 
in  war  may  pray  for  fraternity  in  peace,  and  the 
church  that  insists  upon  religion  as  a  social  bond  must 
also  preach  a  God  whose  presence  gives  efl&cacy  to 
every  effort  toward  the  ennobling  of  social  discontent, 
who  is  himself  the  inspiration  of  all  social  as  well  as 
of  all  individual  effort. 

Social  reform  needs  reenforcement  at  just  this 
point.  It  is  not  enough  to  clean  up  the  slums,  to 
build  schoolhouses  with  playgrounds,  to  appoint 
boards  of  arbitration.  All  these  and  countless  other 
reforms,  provided  only  they  are  not  reforms  against 
nature,  are  necessary  and  invaluable.  But  if  they 
ignore  God,  what  promise  is  there  in  them  of  a 


114  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

completed  social  evolution  ?  In  addition  to  reform, 
men  need  to  feel  that  there  is  something  more  power- 
ful making  for  social  peace  than  even  regenerate 
men  in  a  new  environment.  That  something  is  a 
God.  Only  He  must  be  no  fate  that  sits  and  grins 
at  human  misery,  but  one  who  is  the  guardian  of 
widows  and  orphans,  who  knows  our  human  needs, 
and  who  can  so  work  upon  the  hearts  of  men  that 
they  shall  turn  from  injustice  to  justice,  and  from 
selfishness  to  love.    He  must  be  the  Father  of  Jesus. 

I  know  the  response  Ukely  to  be  made  to  this.  It 
is  a  return  to  the  faith  of  childhood,  and  that  for 
men  is  very  difficult.  It  is  easy  to  see  God  in  the 
calculable,  impersonal  course  of  sun  and  comet, 
but  it  is  tragically  hard  to  see  him  in  the  economic 
world  in  which  one  struggles.  One  may  even  be 
indifferent  as  to  whether  God  really  works  in  the 
law  of  gravitation ;  but  what  if  He  be  said  to  work  in 
Gresham's  law  or  the  iron  law  of  wages?  It  is 
easier,  then,  to  fall  back  on  social  psychology  and 
leave  God  to  the  theologian. 

But,  none  the  less,  there  are  the  facts  of  social 
evolution  and  of  Christian  history.  Despite  its 
own  questions,  the  church  must  take  up  its  Master's 
work,  and,  while  it  teaches  men  to  be  kind  and 
helpful,  it  must  also  insist  that  they  can  believe  in  a 


CHURCH   AND  THE   GOSPEL   OF   BROTHERHOOD      II5 

God  that  still  loves  and  reigns ;  who  in  the  last  anal- 
ysis is  the  basis  of  social  law  —  the  One  who  will 
give  men  the  kingdom  of  brotherliness. 

Times  change,  but  man  and  God  and  faith  survive. 
With  many  a  David  mad  to  wrest  from  some  unwill- 
ing Nabal  the  wealth  he  holds  to  be  his  by  equity,  if 
not  by  law ;  with  many  a  Nabal  clinging  to  privileges 
he  is  too  blind  to  see  are  another's  quite  as  much  as 
his  own;  out  from  our  storm-and-stress  period,  we, 
too,  believe  that  humanity  is  something  more  than 
selfishness  and  that  life  is  more  than  meat.  But 
we  need  to  be  taught  that  religion  is  social  as  well 
as  individualistic ;  that  only  from  the  union  of  lives 
can  there  result  safety  and  peace ;  and  that  the  bundle 
into  which  lives  are  to  be  bound  must  be  the  life 
of  God.  Only  the  church  that  sets  before  itself 
this  social  service  is  working  in  the  spirit  of  its  Master; 
it  alone  really  appreciates  its  responsibility  in  con- 
verting society  into  the  kingdom  of  God.  It  alone 
is  really  preaching  "  the  old  Gospel." 


CHAPTER   V 

THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIAL  DISCONTENT 

No  matter  from  what  point  of  view  he  approaches 
the  subject,  any  thoughtful  man  must  be  appalled 
at  what  he  must  see  to  be  the  possible  consequences 
of  the  growing  divorce  of  the  church  and  the  masses. 
For  he  must  feel  that  the  church  cannot  long  survive 
its  present  indifiference,  or  at  best  its  ineffectual 
anxiety  concerning  its  relations  to  those  great  revo- 
lutionary movements  already  discernible  through- 
out the  world. 

I 

I.  The  most  superficial  observer  knows  that  there 
is  widespread  economic  discontent.  We  are  reaping 
what  our  fathers  sowed.  With  the  beginning  of  the 
modern  era  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
capitalism  usurped  the  place  of  a  feudal  aristocracy. 
The  movement  for  political  liberty  resulted  in  re- 
pubhcs,  but  it  could  not  prevent  the  segregation  of 
artisans  about  factories  and  the  rise  of  a  group  of 
conscienceless,  short-sighted  employers  to  whom 
human  nature  was  as  nothing  and  the  building  up 

ii6 


THE  CHURCH  AND   SOCIAL   DISCONTENT       II7 

of  fortunes  eveiythmg.  It  was  inevitable  that  a 
reaction  should  come  from  such  misappropriation 
of  power  and  disregard  of  responsibility.  And  this 
reaction  became  something  more  than  envy  and  covet- 
ousness.  The  poor  have  always  been  unreconciled 
to  seeing  others  rich,  but  the  bitterness  of  economic 
contrasts  was  deepened  by  the  increased  helplessness 
of  these  factory  communities.  Theoretically,  labor 
was  free  to  sell  itself  to  the  highest  bidder.  Prac- 
tically, the  laborer  was  without  the  means  of  moving 
from  the  place  of  his  employment  and  always  bar- 
gained at  a  disadvantage. 

The  labor  union  was  the  inevitable  outcome  of  such 
conditions.  It  was  the  child  of  discontent  and  in- 
justice, real  or  imagined.  Throughout  its  successive 
transformations  it  has  always  insisted  that  labor  is  not 
getting  its  fair  share  of  that  which  it  produced,  and 
that  the  machine  and  its  owner,  the  store  and  the 
commission  merchant,  were  getting  altogether  too 
large  a  share  of  the  social  product. 

The  rise  in  wages,  which  is  one  of  the  most  re- 
markable features  in  to-day's  economic  life,  has  in- 
creased rather  than  diminished  this  discontent.  It 
would  not  do  to  say  that  the  labor  movement  is  becom- 
ing a  phase  of  socialism,  but  it  would  be  even  more 
unsafe  to  deny  that  it  shares  common  ground  with 


Il8  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

the  socialist  in  its  demand  for  a  larger  share  of  the 
products  of  industrial  processes.  The  wage-earner 
no  more  than  the  speculator  finds  discontent  di- 
minishing with  an  increase  of  income.  The  more  one 
has,  the  less  content  is  he  with  what  he  gets.  And  so 
it  has  come  about  that  the  very  prosperity  which 
many  of  our  optimists  treat  as  a  synonym  of  content 
has  increased  contagious  discontent,  until  the  entire 
world  is  vocal  with  the  complaints  of  those  who  be- 
lieve that  their  prosperity  is  not  proportionate  to 
their  share  in  the  creation  of  the  prosperity  of  others. 

2.  Such  an  attitude  of  mind  inevitably  extends 
itself  into  politics.  The  rise  of  socialism  as  a  political 
force  is  one  of  the  most  striking  phenomena  of  the 
past  decade.  Italy,  France,  Germany,  Russia, 
Belgium,  Great  Britain,  and  more  recently  the 
United  States,  have  well-organized  and  effective 
socialistic  parties  who  go  about  their  campaigns 
with  the  fervor  of  propagandists.  Economic  in- 
equalities are  to  be  righted  by  political  action. 

But  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  feel  that  socialism 
is  the  only  political  phase  of  this  discontent.  In 
Great  Britain  the  labor  party  is  already  developing 
unexpected  strength  in  Parliament,  and  in  the  United 
States  it  is  inaugurating  one  of  those  great  popular 
movements  which  might  almost  be  called  cyclical. 


THE    CHURCH   AND   SOCIAL    DISCONTENT       II9 

The  greenback  movement,  populism,  the  extraor- 
dinary movement  represented  and  fostered  by 
Mr.  Hearst,  are  all  expressions,  in  the  terms  of  politics, 
of  a  discontent  which  is  not  concerned  v^^ith  platforms 
and  parties,  but  with  the  actual  condition  of  those 
who  first  of  all  believe  that  they  have  not  had  their 
proper  share  in  the  blessings  of  economic  develop- 
ment. 

3.  It  is  hard  for  most  church  members  to  judge 
of  these  movements  impartially,  to  say  nothing  of 
their  almost  universal  inability  to  judge  them  sym- 
pathetically. But  he  is  an  unsafe  leader  in  Christian 
activity  who  belittles  them  or  misjudges  them.  For 
this  discontent  includes  within  itself  a  distrust  of  the 
church. 

There  is  an  alarming  tendency  for  the  church's 
influence  to  be  limited  by  the  class  cleavage  of  society. 
Such  a  cleavage  is  not  apparent  in  communities 
where  modem  industrial  forces  are  as  yet  inoperative, 
but  it  appears  the  moment  that  such  forces  come 
into  being.  The  grounds  for  this  are  not  merely 
that  our  wage-earners,  to  a  very  large  extent,  are 
foreigners  owing  a  more  or  less  sincere  allegiance  to 
the  Roman  Catholic  church :  it  is  not  to  be  accounted 
for  in  any  large  measure  by  the  fact  that  so  many  of 
the  leaders  discontent  are  Jews  who  in  the  reaction 


120   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

from  Talmudism  find  themselves  practically  without 
any  religion  whatsoever;  it  is  not  due  to  the  fact 
that  so  many  immigrants  have  developed  a  genuine 
hatred  of  Roman  Catholicism  and  welcome  the 
infidelity  of  Paine  and  IngersoU.  These  facts  have 
their  influence,  but  one  must  make  a  wider  induction 
to  discover  why  economic  and  political  discontent 
have  dissociated  the  masses  from  Protestant  churches. 

The  real  ground  for  the  cleavage  lies  in  a  class 
consciousness  which  is  economic.  The  Protestant 
churches  are  composed  almost  exclusively  of  those 
who  belong  to  or  who  are  in  sympathy  with  the  capi- 
talistic classes :  employers,  salaried  persons,  farmers, 
and  those  engaged  in  personal  service  of  such  persons, 
like  cooks,  housemaids,  and  coachmen.  This  fact 
and  the  far  more  discreditable  one  that  church 
members  have  been  too  often  notoriously  indifferent 
to  the  need  of  applying  the  principles  they  profess 
to  believe  to  industrial  matters,  have  led  the  wage- 
earning  class  as  a  whole  to  regard  the  church  as  an 
institution  allied  with  capitalism  and  the  local  church 
as  a  social  club. 

Any  one  who  is  a  member  of  a  genuinely  Christian 
church  knows  how  unwarranted  such  a  suspicion  is. 
Most  churches  would  be  only  too  glad  to  welcome 
the  workingman;  but  workingmen  as  a  class  do  not 


THE   CHURCH  AND   SOCIAL   DISCONTENT       121 

want  to  go  to  Protestant  churches,  because  they  \ 
distrust  the  ministers  and  distrust  church  members.  \ 
I  cannot  believe  that  such  a  distrust  is  justifiable,  but 
the  church  cannot  afford  to  close  its  eyes  to  the  fact 
that  it  exists.  The  failure  to  face  this  fact  has  led 
to  an  increase  of  the  suspicion  and  to  a  further 
extension  of  discontent.  The  man  who  feels  that  he 
has  been  wronged  is  not  likely  to  assume  a  judicial 
attitude  or  to  miss  an  opportunity  to  generalize 
from  any  fact  which  seems  to  justify  the  hostility 
he  may  possess. 

A  few  years  ago  an  arbitration  committee  in  \ 
Chicago,  composed  of  three  clergymen,  charged  one 
thousand  dollars  apiece  for  rendering  its  decision. 
The  fact  that  this  verdict  was,  on  the  whole,  against 
the  wage-earner,  coupled  with  the  exorbitant  charge 
for  a  few  days'  work,  did  more  to  confirm  organized 
labor  in  its  conviction  that  the  churches  were  the 
creatures  of  capitalists  than  any  number  of  sermons 
could  remove.  The  hesitation  of  many  preachers  ^ 
to  speak  openly  upon  the  morality  of  economic  life 
has  served  to  confirm  the  attitude  of  the  masses. 
The  socialist  who  hates  the  church  as  an  essentially 
bourgeois  organization  has  found  it  easy  to  fan  this 
discontent  and  suspicion  into  downright  hostility. 

Yet,  in  the  meantime,  the  church  seems  happy  in  its 


122   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

lot.  Here  and  there,  it  is  true,  there  is  some  effort 
made  at  conciliation,  notably  among  the  Presby- 
terians ;  but  in  general  the  church  seems  ready  to  rest 
under  the  onus  of  the  accusation  of  being  a  class 
organization,  and  the  clergy  seem  too  often  indiffer- 
ent to  the  fact  that  they  are  hardly  more  than  coop- 
eratively sustained  private  chaplains  of  well-to-do 
cliques. 
And  its  enemies  declare  Christianity  a  lost  cause. 

II 

I.  It  would  be  a  great  mistake  to  imagine  that  this 
threefold  discontent  which  permeates  the  masses 
is  pathological.  It  is  farthest  possible  from  being 
a  sign  of  disease.  Social  movements,  like  that  we 
see  going  on  in  our  day,  are  the  expression  not  of 
degeneracy , but  of  a  new  social  life  bom  of  new  ideals, 
themselves  bom  of  socialized  intelligence.  The 
eighteenth  century  was  another  great  period  of  the 
same  sort.  It,  too,  saw  tremendous  movements  in 
the  western  world  among  those  who,  having  tasted 
of  certain  rights,  believed  that  they  ought  to  have 
still  others.  But  the  discontent  that  gave  rise  to 
the  era  of  revolutions  and  produced  a  new  America 
and  a  new  Europe  was  certainly  not  a  creature  of 
weakness.    The  eighteenth  century  was  not  an  age 


THE   CHURCH  AND   SOCIAL   DISCONTENT        1 23 

of  saints,  but  it  was  something  more  than  an  age 
of  destruction. 

From  one  point  of  view,  a  contented  man  is  the 
most  dangerous  member  of  a  community.  True, 
he  can  be  counted  upon  not  to  head  revolutions  or 
even  to  bolt  his  party  ticket;  but  he  is  a  millstone 
around  the  neck  of  progress.  That  sort  of  discontent 
which  sends  the  boy  from  the  farm  to  the  city  to  make 
his  fortune  is  the  hope  of  the  industrial  supremacy 
of  the  nation.  That  sort  of  contentment  which  pre- 
fers to  see  things  as  they  always  have  been,  because 
it  is  too  much  trouble  to  change  them,  is  nothing  more 
nor  less  than  social  lethargy.  To  denounce  dis- 
content because  we  are  prosperous,  and  therefore 
everybody  else  ought  to  be  satisfied,  is  worse  than 
futile.  It  not  only  discloses  a  hopeless  incapacity 
to  face  facts,  but  it  also  serves  to  turn  existing  dis- 
content into  downright  class  hatred. 

We  cannot  comfortably  say  to  ourselves  that  in 
the  course  of  time  the  present  situation  will  pass, 
leaving  all  things  as  they  were.  Whoever  hugs  such 
optimism  to  his  soul  is  a  fool.  Discontent  has  always 
bred  change.  Bom  of  a  more  or  less  fermenting 
idealism,  it  has  changed  institutions  and  laws  and 
re-classed  privileges.  It  always  will  change  them. 
The  discontent  of  to-day's  life  is  expressing  itself  in 


124  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

huge  organizations,  in  political  parties,  in  literature, 
and  in  a  class  consciousness.  It  will  work  changes 
as  certainly  as  darkness  disappears  when  the  sun 
rises.  To  question  the  certainty  of  such  a  result 
is  to  question  natural  law. 

2.  And  these  changes  which  are  to  be  wrought 
will  be  in  accordance  with  the  ideals  which  have 
occasioned  discontent  and  toward  which  the  efforts 
of  reconstruction  are  directed. 

Just  what  these  ideals  are  can  be  learned  by  any 
person  who  will  take  the  trouble  to  study  the  two 
great  literatures  of  popular  idealism:  socialistic 
propaganda  and  the  journals  of  organized  labor. 
There  are  other  publications  claiming  to  represent 
these  ideals,  but  too  often  they  are  less  trustworthy 
exponents  of  the  masses  than  they  are  bids  for  the 
support  of  the  masses.  The  demagogue  may  be  in 
a  fashion  the  mouthpiece  of  discontent,  for  he  en- 
deavors to  appeal  to  what  he  regards  the  dominant 
feeling  of  those  whom  we  would  control;  but  dis- 
content is  no  mere  creature  of  the  demagogic  agitator. 
There  is  a  passionate  sincerity  in  the  literature  of 
both  socialists  and  the  labor  unions  which  compels 
respect,  A  man  does  not  need  to  approve  of  every- 
thing to  be  found  in  this  literature,  but  he  must 
recognize  the  fact  that  both  the  socialist  and  the 


THE   CHURCH  AND   SOCIAL    DISCONTENT       12$ 

labor  movements  are  brimful  of  an  idealism  which 
is  not  to  be  measured  by  their  economic  accomplish- 
ments. Each  alike  is  a  Cause.  Each  believes 
itself  to  be  a  champion  of  human  betterment.  Men 
will  plead  and  fight  for  them,  and,  if  need  be,  die 
for  either  cause  with  the  self-sacrifice  that  led  the 
msiTtyr  to  the  stake. 

This  self-estimate,  particularly  that  of  organized 
labor,  is  justified  in  actual  accomplishment.  The 
member  of  that  middle  class  from  which  church 
membership  is  largely  drawn  finds  it  difficult  to 
reahze  the  truth  of  this  statement.  In  a  general  sort 
of  way,  he  believes  that  labor  has  the  right  to  organ- 
ize, but  on  the  whole  he  is  inclined  to  believe  that 
its  aims  are  selfish,  irrational,  and  productive  of 
nothing  but  a  social  discontent,  boding  evil.  For  a 
socialist  he  has  less  respect  and  more  fear.  A  man 
pleading  for  a  candid  examination  of  the  motives 
which  rule  in  these  two  great  popular  movements  is 
very  apt  to  become  an  object  of  suspicion.  But  with- 
out any  disrespect  for  the  work  of  organized  Chris- 
tianity, it  must  be  said  that  there  is  many  a  church 
which,  in  point  of  general  altruism  and  of  loyalty 
to  its  professions  of  high  purpose,  could  not  endure 
a  comparison  with  the  work  of  some  labor  unions. 
It  would  be  a  severe  shock  to  the  self-esteem  of  such 


126     THE   CHURCH  AND   THE   CHANGING   ORDER 

churches  to  compare  their  fellowship  funds,  which 
are  spent  in  alleviating  the  wants  of  their  poor 
members,  with  not  only  the  funds  but  also  the  prac- 
tical help  of  other  sorts  with  which  many  a  labor 
union  surrounds  its  members. 

3.  It  cannot  be  too  often  repeated  or  too  strongly 
emphasized  that  if  the  church  is  to  affect  the  labor 
movement  and  socialism,  it  must  recognize  that,  while 
each  works  within  an  economic  class,  neither  is 
exclusively  economic  in  motive.  Each  emphasizes 
more  than  does  many  a  church  the  specific  application 
of  its  ideals  of  fraternity  and  justice  to  economic 
inequality,  but  such  also  would  insist  that  good 
wages  and  fairer  economic  conditions  are  not  ends 
in  themselves.  At  the  end  of  the  struggle  is  to  come 
equality  and  fraternity.  The  foreigner  working  in 
the  stock- yards  of  Chicago  is  determined  that  his 
children  shall  be  educated,  that  they  shall  share  in 
all  the  good  there  is  in  hfe,  as  he  knows  it.  Therefore 
it  is  that  he  buys  pianos  on  instalments  and  hangs 
pictures  on  his  walls  and  forces  his  boys  and  girls 
to  go  to  school  and,  in  ever  increasing  numbers, 
to  college  as  well.  Such  discontent  will  never  be 
quieted  by  better  wages.  It  rises  up  against  some- 
thing besides  economic  poverty.  It  will  not  endure 
poverty  in  life. 


THE   CHURCH  AND   SOCIAL    DISCONTENT       127 

Nor  is  this  estimate  of  proletarian  idealism  to  be 
destroyed  by  a  reference  to  the  lawlessness  and 
violence  which  attend  a  strike.  Such  violence  is 
unjustifiable,  and  is  cleariy  an  injury  to  the  better 
ideals  of  the  labor  movement.  But,  if  organized 
labor  has  its  strikes,  has  not  the  church  had  its  holy 
wars  ?  And  if  the  labor  union  has  its  agitators  and 
its  demagogues,  has  the  church  not  had  its  murderous 
persecutors?  It  is  time  the  idealist  in  the  church 
sees  a  brother  in  the  idealist  in  the  man  who  voices 
social  discontent. 

Ill 

I  would  not  be  understood  by  these  unpalatable 
comparisons  to  argue  that  all  the  ideals  which  lie 
back  of  social  discontent  are  as  noble  as  those  of  the 
church.  Farthest  possible  would  I  be  from  arguing 
that  the  labor  union  any  more  than  a  lodge  should 
become  a  substitute  for  the  church.  The  splendid 
altruism  of  foreign  missions  has  no  rival  in  the  mutual 
benefit  funds  of  the  union,  and,  in  general,  a  genu- 
inely evangelical  church  is  less  self-centred  than  a 
labor  organization.  Theoretically  and,  even  with  the 
necessary  allowance  for  human  frailty,  practically, 
the  church  stands  for  duties,  the  labor  movement  for 
rights.  For  these  reasons,  if  for  no  other,  the  more 
equitably  one  endeavors  to  value  the  facts  of  society, 


128   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

the  more  is  one  convinced  that  this  discontent  as  it  is 
expressed  in  the  organizations  of  the  non-church- 
going  masses  needs  the  gospel  and  offers  an  ex- 
ceptional opportunity  for  the  influence  of  a  church 
loyal  to  the  ideas  of  the  gospel. 

The  greatest  service  which  the  church  can  render 
society  just  at  present  would  be  to  contribute  the 
spirit  of  Jesus  to  the  ideals  which  are  provocative 
of  discontent. 

The  gospel  is  something  more  than  a  creed,  and 
the  obligations  of  organized  Christianity  are  some- 
thing more  than  an  insistence  upon  a  scholastic  or- 
thodoxy. The  past  should  make  this  clear.  Eras 
of  theological  discussion  have  been  eras  of  moral 
retrogression.  Much  of  the  dynamic  power  of  popu- 
lar movements  is  derived  from  a  partial  sociahzation 
of  the  ideals  for  which  the  church  avowedly  stands 
in  periods  of  vital  religion. 

I.  But  here  one  faces  an  as  yet  insurmountable 
difficulty.  The  wage-earning  classes,  as  classes 
believe,  or  affect  to  believe,  that  the  church  is  untrue 
to  its  own  ideals,  and  has  allowed  itself  to  become 
an  organ  of  capitalism  and  is  giving  the  lie  to  its  own 
'  professions  of  brotherhood.  To  quote  the  words  of 
Mr.  Gompers,  President  of  the  American  Federation 
of  Labor:  — 


THE   CHURCH   AND   SOCIAL   DISCONTENT       1 29 

"  My  associates  have  come  to  look  upon  the  church  and 
the  mmistry  as  the  apologists  and  defenders  of  the  wrong 
committed  against  the  interests  of  the  people,  simply  because 
the  perpetrators  are  possessors  of  wealth,  .  .  .  whose  real  god 
is  the  almighty  dollar,  and  who  contribute  a  few  of  their  idols 
to  suborn  the  intellect  and  eloquence  of  the  divines,  and  make 
even  their  otherwise  generous  hearts  callous  to  the  sufferings 
of  the  poor  and  struggling  workers,  so  that  they  may  use  their 
exalted  positions  to  discourage  and  discountenance  all  practi- 
cal efforts  of  the  toilers  to  lift  themselves  out  of  the  slough  of 
despondency  and  despair." 

I  do  not  believe  the  charge  is  wholly  true,  but 
neither  is  it  wholly  without  foundation.  At  all  events 
it  represents  an  actual  element  in  the  social  mind. 
The  church  cannot  avoid  trial  at  the  bar  of  those  who, 
like  the  labor  leaders  and  the  socialists  with  all  their 
mistakes  and  distorted  partisanship,  have  appro- 
priated even  in  part  its  ideals.  However  zealous 
a  church  member  may  be  in  his  professions  of  loyalty 
to  the  teachings  of  the  New  Testament,  or  however 
effective  he  may  be  as  a  champion  of  an  individual- 
istic salvation,  he  cannot  escape  condemnation  by 
those  outside  of  his  own  economic  class  who  repudiate 
those  commercial  presuppositions  which  he  and  the 
other  members  of  his  class  carry  into  their  church 
life.  The  church  must  make  its  central  teachings 
central. 


130  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

The  attitude  of  many  professing  Christians  toward 
industrial  life  is  far  from  being  an  asset  in  the  effort 
of  the  church  to  bring  its  idealism  more  effectively 
into  the  industrial  world.  Speaking  in  a  broad  way, 
many  of  those  conditions  which  give  rise  to  social 
discontent  have  been  set  and  are  being  maintained 
by  men  who  are  members  of  the  church  of  Christ. 
The  fact  that  a  man  is  a  professing  Christian  has  not 
always  prevented  his  paying  low  wages,  or  leaving 
dangerous  machinery  exposed,  or  employing  children, 
or  maintaining  "pluck  me"  stores.  One  may  well 
believe  there  are  many  exceptions  to  the  charges 
made  by  the  representatives  of  the  wage-earner  that 
the  Christian  employer  is  no  better  than  the  un- 
christian ;  but  it  is  not  to  make  a  very  strong  defence 
to  reply  that  the  Christian  employer  is,  after  all,  the 
creature  of  the  world  of  business  to  which,  by  the  very 
necessity  of  the  case,  he  is  obliged  to  conform.  This, 
unfortunately,  is  close  to  the  truth,  but  it  simply 
gives  point  to  the  discontent  with  the  church.  For 
why  should  the  Christian  employer  with  his  protes- 
tations of  loyalty  to  the  gospel  of  the  eternal  life  be 
subservient  to  Mammon?  Why  should  he  not  at- 
tempt more  vigorously  to  rectify  the  conditions  which 
the  world  of  labor  and  of  capital  alike  believe  to  be 
so  unjust  ?    Above  all,  why  should  he  not  obey  re- 


THE   CHURCH  AND  SOCIAL   DISCONTENT        131 

forming  legislation  and  exert  all  his  influence  to  create 
a  better  and  more  human  spirit  in  the  world  of 
industry  ? 

No  one,  least  of  all  the  genuinely  Christian  em- 
ployer, would  claim  that  the  industrial  world  is  as 
full  of  fraternity  as  it  ought  to  be.  But  this  conces- 
sion, on  his  part,  does  not  serve  to  allay  discontent 
on  the  part  of  those  who  suflFer  rather  than  gain  from 
this  lack.  There  is  needed  further  a  distinct  evi- 
dence of  some  effort  on  the  part  of  the  Christian 
capitalist  to  bring  matters  more  thoroughly  into 
line  with  his  own  ideals.  The  history  of  the  tre- 
mendous development  of  industrialism  during  the 
past  generation  abounds  in  examples  of  Christian 
employers  who  have  genuinely  attempted  to  benefit 
their  employees.  But  the  last  few  years  have  also 
been  marked  with  a  tendency  on  the  part  of  Christian 
capitalists  to  escape  moral  obligations  by  a  retreat 
behind  corporate  interests. 

These  facts  make  a  rapprochement  on  the  part  of 
the  church  and  the  masses  exceedingly  difficult.  If 
there  were  no  moral  question  involved,  it  would  be 
far  easier.  But  morality  is  involved,  and  that,  too, 
of  the  church  member.  After  all  allowance  has  been 
made  for  the  recent  advance  of  social  standards 
toward  elemental  justice,  to  say  nothing  of  fraternity, 


132   THE  CHUBCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

it  is  a  fair  question  whether  such  advance  has  not  been 
due  more  to  the  efforts  of  the  masses  to  obtain  rights 
than  to  the  voluntary  sharing  of  privilege  by  church 
members.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  the  masses  distrust 
fine  phrases?  The  very  insistence  on  the  part  of 
the  church  that  it  is  to  be  judged  by  its  ideals,  and 
as  an  organ  of  moral  and  religious  inspiration,  has 
tended  to  alienate  rather  than  to  win  the  masses; 
for  this  insistence  itself  has  given  those  who  are  keenly 
alive  to  what  they  believe  to  be  economic  injustice 
\  grounds  for  their  charge  that  the  church  allows  class 
interests  to  pervert  or  to  nullify  its  own  ideals. 

2.  Similarly,  in  regard  to  political  discontent. 
The  point  of  contact  between  the  church  and  the 
masses  is  again  in  the  region  of  morals ;  but  here  again 
Christian  men  have  failed  to  make  a  regenerating 
connection  between  the  gospel  which  they  profess 
and  the  actual  conditions  of  society  in  which  they 
live.  Church  members  have  insisted  that  the  work 
of  the  ministry  is  to  preach  "the  old  gospel."  Noth- 
ing could  be  truer  as  a  proposition,  but  nothing  could 
be  more  deadening  to  the  social  conscience  than  the 
interpretation  which  the  average  church  member 
places  upon  such  a  formula.  It  is  commonly 
held  to  mean  that  the  minister,  the  moral  teacher 
of  the  community,  is  to  leave  politics  as  well  as 


THE    CHURCH   AND    SOCIAL   DISCONTENT       1 33 

economics  severely  alone.  As  things  are,  such  a 
course  is  undoubtedly  wise  policy,  for  political  ser- 
mons would  likely  be  partisan  sermons,  and  in  a 
democracy  we  expect  to  suflFer  from  the  other  man's 
partisanship.  But  what  will  be  the  outcome  if  the 
spirit  of  Jesus  be  permanently  excluded  from  the 
field  of  politics  ? 

The  existing  political  discontent  is  something  more 
than  a  discontent  with  certain  parties.  It  concerns 
the  great  moral  issues  which  are  involved  in  govern- 
ment. And  here  the  church  has  a  mission  which 
no  other  social  institution  can  fulfil.  It  must  make 
moral  issues  and  ideals  regulative  and  controlling 
in  the  world  of  politics.  Yet  the  indifference  of 
Christians  to  their  political  obligations  is  notorious. 
It  is  not  merely  that  they  have  allowed  themselves 
to  follow  unquestioningly  their  party  leaders;  for 
that  is  probably  the  inevitable  accompaniment  of 
popular  government.  The  great  reason  why  the  1 
church  has  had  so  httle  effect  upon  pohtics  has  been  j 
that  the  Christian  voter  has  never  sufficiently  realized  ; 
that  pohtics  is  in  the  field  of  morals.  Matters  are 
already  righting  themselves,  but  somehow,  Chris- 
tian men  still  vote  for  notoriously  corrupt  men,  and 
themselves  benefit  by  political  corruption.  Pohtics, 
as  it  now  exists  is  not  concerned  largely  with  matters 


134   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

which  we  ordinarily  think  of  as  political.  As  the 
examination  of  the  records  of  any  legislature  will 
show,  the  chief  occupation  of  the  modem  legislator 
is  the  passage  of  private  bills  which  concern  business 
enterprises.  And  Christian  men  have  not  hesitated 
to  manipulate  legislation  by  unworthy  means  in  order 
to  accomplish  unworthy  ends.  They  have  furnished 
money  to  assist  in  the  election  of  men  they  knew  to 
be,  or  might  easily  have  discovered  to  be,  dishonest. 
They  have  maintained  lobbies  trained  in  illegitimate 
methods.  In  the  same  proportion  as  they  have  had 
control  of  wealth,  too  many  of  them  have  not  hesi- 
tated to  regard  politics  as  a  department  of  their 
business. 

This  is  not  to  say  such  men  are  wholly  to  blame. 
Legislative  bodies,  from  city  councils  to  the  national 
Congress,  have  always  included  men  who  have  been 
ready  to  use  their  position  as  a  means  by  which 
to  blackmail  business  interests.  But  to  state  such 
facts  as  these  is  to  call  attention  to  some  of  the  reasons 
why  the  church  finds  it  difficult  to  deal  with  that 
rising  discontent  among  the  masses  bom  of  the  belief 
that  government  as  it  exists,  whether  in  a  monarchy 
like  Germany  or  in  a  republic  like  the  United  States, 
is  a  creature  of  the  capitalistic  class,  and  that  the 
church  is  an  institution  of  that  class. 


THE  CHURCH  AND   SOCIAL   DISCONTENT       135 

In  politics,  as  in  economics,  the  vital  questions 
are  not  whether  this  bill  or  that  bill,  this  particu- 
lar policy  or  that  particular  policy,  should  prevail. 
Attention  should  not  be  diverted  from  the  far  deeper 
issues  of  fundamental  right  and  wrong.  After  all 
has  been  said  in  favor  of  political  utilitarianism, 
there  yet  remains  this  primary  fact,  that  beneath  all 
political  issues  lies  morality.  It  is  at  this  point  that 
the  church  ought  to  be  a  leader  and  must  be  a  leader 
if  it  is  to  remain  anything  more  than  an  organiza- 
tion for  semi-aesthetic  religious  culture.  Social  dis- 
content can  never  be  impregnated  with  principles 
of  Christianity  by  a  body  of  men  who  persist  in  main- 
taining that  the  morality  which  the  church  is  to  in- 
culcate must  not  concern  itself  with  the  questions  of 
the  large  social  life.  The  church  must,  indeed,  insist 
that  the  groceryman  sell  sixteen  ounces  to  the  pound, 
and  that  men  and  women  observe  the  seventh  com- 
mandment ;  but  it  will  be  a  decreasingly  influential 
factor  in  society  if  it  does  not  also  train  the  conscience 
to  such  a  point  that  under  its  remorseless  spur  the 
influence  of  Christian  men  shall  be  powerful  enough 
to  remove  those  suspicions  of  the  honesty  of  the  gov- 
ernment which  are  just  now  the  largest  stock  in  trade 
of  the  political  agitator,  whether  demagogue  or  sincere. 

3.    Further,  the  church  has  a  serious  task  when 


136   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

it  undertakes  to  deal  with  the  discontent  of  the  masses 
as  regards  religion  itself.  Far  more  than  most  of 
us  are  wont  to  suspect,  the  masses  are  controlled  by 
those  conceptions  of  nature  and  of  humanity  which 
are  the  outcome  of  scientific  materialism. 

It  is,  of  course,  impossible  to  maintain  that  the 
masses  have  read  very  widely  in  materialistic  litera- 
ture, but  there  is  no  question  that  such  literature  has 
a  percolating  influence  through  its  wide  circulation 
among  the  socialists.  Indeed,  it  constitutes  a  part 
of  the  propaganda  of  socialism,  whether  it  be  of  the 
more  philosophical  or  the  more  revolutionary  type. 
To  a  very  considerable  extent  the  revolt  against 
conventional  authority  is  also  a  revolt  against  a  belief 
in  God,  or  at  least  against  the  God  of  Christianity. 
There  are  hundreds  of  societies  among  certain  na- 
tionalities of  immigrants  whose  avowed  purpose  is  to 
ridicule  and  destroy  religion.  The  masses  are  threat- 
ened with  atheism.  The  Roman  church,  indeed, 
exercises  a  considerable  influence  over  the  masses, 
particularly  over  the  women  and  children,  and  it 
also  has  set  itself  vigorously  for  an  attack  upon 
socialism.  But,  however  healthy  its  influence  may 
be,  there  can  be  little  question  that  the  drift  among 
those  struggling  for  economic  betterment  is  steadily 
toward  materialism.    Particularly  among  the  leaders 


THE   CHURCH  AND   SOCIAL    DISCONTENT       137 

is  there  a  distrast,  not  only  of  Roman  Catholicism 
and  Protestantism,  but  of  religion  itself. 

This  discontent  with  religion  is  perhaps  the  most 
aggravated  of  the  dangers  into  which  the  church  at 
present  is  involved,  for  it  concerns  something  more 
than  an  organization  and  cuts  the  ground  out  from 
under  religious  work  of  any  sort.  But  this  is  only 
to  find  our  diagnosis  again  carrying  us  below  the 
superficial  expression  of  discontent  into  its  central 
motives.  As  in  the  economic  and  political  spheres, 
religious  discontent  springs  from  a  region  of  human 
interest  which  is  particularly  that  of  the  church.  If 
it  were  simply  a  question  of  organization,  or  of  more 
money,  or  of  a  political  party,  the  church  would 
be  profoundly  interested  in  the  progress  of  discontent : 
but  because  such  discontent  is  the  outgrowth  of  a 
devotion  to  certain  ideals  which  are  more  than  good 
wages  and  new  parties,  and  involve  moral  and  re- 
ligious judgments,  and  because  it  is  to  such  a  con- 
siderable extent  controlled  by  such  ideals,  the  church 
must  transform  it  or  be  weakened  by  it. 

IV 

How  then  shall  the  church  meet  an  attitude  of  mind 
that,  unless  changed,  threatens  the  further  extension 
of  at  least  Protestant  Christianity? 


138   THE  CHUECH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

I.  This  vital  question  is  not  easily  answered. 
There  are  those  who  hold  that  if  we  can  only  pro- 
duce honest,  chaste,  and  God-fearing  individuals, 
we  shall  overcome  all  social  troubles.  Such  men 
and  women  are  indeed  necessary,  but  it  will  be  a 
serious  mistake  to  think  that  the  present  crisis  will 
be  settled  by  an  unmodified  individualism.  At- 
titudes of  the  social  mind  must  be  treated  from  their 
own  point  of  view.  This  discontent  within  the 
worlds  of  wealth  and  of  politics  and  of  religion  may 
affect  men  who  feel  no  unrest  whatsoever  in  their 
individual  relations.  The  problem  before  the 
church  is  complicated,  and  elusive.  Human  nature 
cannot  be  satisfactorily  transformed  by  preparing 
people  to  hve  in  heaven  in  supreme  disregard  of  the 
social  conditions  in  which  they  and  their  children 
must  live  on  earth.  Social  evils  must  be  remedied 
socially. 

The  difficulty  involved  in  the  fact  that  discontent 
is  an  attitude  of  the  social  mind  is  increased  by  the 
,  further  fact  that  it  is  complicated  with  other  ques- 
I  tions  of  race,  language,  and  religion.  This  is  true 
of  aU  countries  where  discontent  is  now  threatening 
to  ingulf  the  wage-earning  class,  but  it  is  particularly 
true  in  America.  A  comparison  of  social  conditions 
here  with  those  in  Germany,  France,  and  Great 


THE   CHURCH  AND   SOCIAL    DISCONTENT      1 39 

Britain  is  likely  to  bring  depression  to  the  American. 
The  laboring  classes  of  America  are  not  homo- 
geneous. In  large  proportion,  they  are  not  even 
American  bom.  They  are  composed  largely  of 
foreigners  who  bring  with  them  their  own  language 
and  ideals.  The  very  fact  that  they  have  emigrated 
from  their  native  country  argues  special  predilection 
to  discontent.  They  come  with  their  religious 
affiliations  fully  determined  with  some  national 
church  or  with  the  church  of  Rome.  The  relations 
which  exist  between  them  and  their  churches  may 
be  purely  formal,  but  they  are  so  marked  by  preju- 
dice as  to  make  it  all  but  impossible  for  the  Protestant 
churches,  which,  far  more  than  any  other,  represent 
the  spirit  of  American  democracy,  to  influence  them. 
It  is  to  be  borne  in  mind  that,  outside  of  the  Bo- 
hemians, this  discontent,  so  far  as  it  concerns  reli- 
gion, is  concentrated  pretty  largely  upon  Protestant 
churches.  And  yet,  in  the  very  nature  of  the  case, 
these  churches  have  great  difficulty  in  coming  into 
contact  with  their  critics.  It  is  as  hard  for  them  to 
convert  a  Pole  or  a  Finn  as  it  is  a  Chinaman.  This 
fact  must,  to  some  extent,  account  for  the  small  num- 
ber of  wage-earners  in  such  democratic  churches  as 
those  of  the  Baptist,  the  Congregationalist,  the 
Disciples,  and  the  Methodist  denominations.    In 


140   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

small  cities  it  is  possible  for  churches  to  come  closer 
to  the  people  and  to  the  labor  movement  than  in  a 
great  city ;  but  the  reason  for  this  is  not  simply  that 
the  city  churches  are  less  eager  to  come  into  contact 
with  the  masses,  but  that  the  masses  in  great  centres 
are,  to  a  large  extent,  foreigners  already  nominally 
associated  with  non-Protestant  and  national 
churches. 

2.  None  the  less,  desperate  as  the  situation  must 
appear  to  any  man  who  looks  at  it  in  the  large,  it  is 
not  without  hope.  In  the  long  run,  public  opinion 
can  be  affected  by  modifying  the  sympathy  and 
idealism  of  individuals.  And  it  is  the  almost  uni- 
form testimony  of  clergymen,  that  while  labor  union- 
ism and  socialism  as  movements  are  opposed  to  the 
Christian  church  and  increasingly  to  religion  itself, 
the  average  wage-earner  as  an  individual  has  not  as 
yet  taken  a  pronouncedly  hostile  attitude  toward  the 
moral  or  religious  principles  for  which  the  church  — 
Roman,  Greek,  and  Protestant  —  stands.  If  he  is 
not  too  thoroughly  committed  to  the  national  church 
of  his  fathers,  or  has  not  committed  himself  to  an 
atheistic  propaganda,  he  sends  his  children  to  a 
Protestant  Sunday-school;  and  once  he  is  convinced 
that  a  clergyman  has  no  unworthy  motive,  he  is 
ready  to  meet  him  as  man  with  man.    The  con- 


THE   CHURCH  AND   SOCIAL   DISCONTENT      141 

sensus  of  opinion  of  nearly  forty  clergymen  in 
Chicago,  of  whom  inquiry  was  made,  is  to  the  effect 
that  the  attitude  of  the  workingman  to  the  church, 
notwithstanding  his  economic  discontent,  is  really 
one  of  indifiference. 

It  is  this  fact  that  makes  the  moment  so  critical 
in  the  history  of  aggressive  and  vital  Christianity. 
This  attitude  of  indifference  cannot  continue.  The 
masses  are  coming  increasingly  under  the  control  of 
men  in  avowed  revolt  from  existing  conditions.  If 
in  some  way  their  influence  is  not  counteracted,  this 
indifference  on  the  part  of  the  individual  will  be 
transferred  into  effective  hostility.  In  fact,  as  has 
already  been  said,  the  tendency  in  that  direction  is 
already  apparent.  The  church  must  immediately 
come  into  contact  with  the  masses,  if  this  tendency 
is  to  be  met.  It  cannot,  in  any  large  way,  probably 
affect  the  labor  movement  as  such.  The  men  whom 
the  preacher  would  meet  at  the  session  of  a  union 
or  at  a  meeting  of  socialists  are  possessed  of  the 
spirit  of  the  debater  or  the  propagandist.  But  the 
church  can  come  mto  contact  with  the  individual 
workingman  on  the  very  ground  which  lies  below 
his  political  and  economical  unrest.  It  can  bring 
religion  home  to  the  individual,  and  through  its 
Sunday-school  can  train  up  a  generation  of  those 


142   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

who  are  to  be  leaders  in  social  life  to  a  larger  sense 
of  their  social  obligations. 

3.  The  pressing  duty,  therefore,  of  the  church  is 
to  moralize  social  influences  through  the  slow  pro- 
cess of  the  development  of  new  moral  and  religious 
ideals  in  the  two  classes  which  just  now  stand  in 
unfortunate  antagonism.  In  other  words,  it  is  to 
attempt  the  regeneration  of  class  consciousness  by 
the  elevation  and  energizing  of  moral  ideals  of  the 
representatives  of  both  capital  and  labor.  It  is  not 
the  business  of  the  church,  as  an  institution,  to  go 
into  the  field  of  economics  or  politics.  The  church 
is  not  a  sociological  lectureship.  Its  function  is 
spiritual  in  the  largest  sense  of  the  word.  One  of 
the  chief  reasons  why  the  social  influence  of  the 
pulpit  is  not  greater  among  the  masses  is  undoubtedly 
the  fact,  that  in  its  zeal  to  get  in  touch  with  the  masses 
it  has  undertaken  to  do  too  many  things.  Preachers 
have  been  nagged  into  undertaking  every  sort  of 
reform.  But  in  the  same  proportion  as  the  church 
has  been  diverted  from  its  peculiar  field,  in  the 
division  of  labor  or  society,  has  it  lost  not  only  its 
religious  but  its  general  social  influence. 

But  any  institutional  church  —  and  a  church  that 
is  not  institutional  is  missing  its  greatest  opportunity 
to  reach  the  masses  —  any  institutional  church  that 


THE   CHURCH  AND   SOCIAL   DISCONTENT      1 43 

is  doing  its  duty,  and  is  actually  touching  the  life 
of  its  constituency,  is  doing  something  more  than 
keeping  its  members  out  of  mischief  or  amusing 
them.  It  is  also  developing  their  moral  sympathies. 
A  mere  churchman  is  as  much  the  creature  of  the 
imagination  as  the  economic  man.  Church  members 
are  also  wealth-producers  and  citizens.  The  church 
as  a  social  organization  is  expected  to  develop  a 
quality  of  life  on  the  part  of  its  members  which  shall 
express  itself  in  their  economic  and  political  activity 
in  accordance  with  the  principles  of  Christianity. 

This,  of  course,  is  simply  to  reiterate  that  upon 
which  the  church  itself  has  again  and  again  in- 
sisted; but  the  reiteration  is  more  than  ever  de- 
manded just  now  when  the  church  faces  one  of  its 
supreme  crises  and  is  bewildered  as  to  the  best 
course  of  procedure.  Christianity  is  undergoing 
the  temptation  of  Christ  to  prostitute  its  supreme 
purpose  to  some  inferior  good.  It  is  so  much  easier 
to  assail  economic  and  political  wrongs  than  to 
train  up  a  generation  of  men  who  shall  be  morally 
and  religiously  sensitive,  and  who  shall  go  out  into 
the  world  to  do  actual  reconstruction  in  accordance 
with  their  own  regenerate  lives.  The  pulpit  should 
attack  abuses,  but  its  chief  function  is  not  that  of 
denunciation,  but  that  of  the  development  of  a 


144   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

moral  sensitiveness  on  the  part  of  its  followers.  It 
must  dignify  discontent  by  ennobling  the  ideals  of 
discontented  men. 

It  may  be  said  that  this  is  precisely  what  the 
church  has  been  doing,  and  that  the  present  con- 
dition is  in  part  the  outcome  of  this  effort. 

The  objection  has  a  certain  plausibihty,  but  little 
else  than  plausibility.  One  must  recognize  that  the 
church  has  always  commendably  stood  for  the 
things  of  the  spirit,  but  one  must  insist  also  that 
to-day  as  never  before  the  church  must  look  upon 
morality  from  a  more  social  and  less  individualistic 
point  of  view.  It  has  trained  its  followers  in  the 
precepts  of  a  morality  that  conceives  of  its  relations 
as  exhausted  in  the  relation  of  distinct  individuals. 
The  church  must  now  train  its  members  to  con- 
ceive of  morality  in  terms  of  the  relation  of  an 
individual  to  society  itself.  Under  the  individualistic 
concept  of  morals  and  religion  a  man  might  be  a 
good  church  member  and  be  honestly  desirous  of 
the  salvation  of  other  men's  souls,  and  yet  see  in 
business  and  politics  fields  of  activity  which  lie  out- 
side of  the  truth  and  ideals  which  he  professed  in  his 
church  relation.  Such  men  were  not  and  are  not 
necessarily  hypocrites.  They  simply  may  not  have 
been  trained  in  the  real  content  of  the  truth  they 


THE   CHURCH  AND   SOCIAL   DISCONTENT       1 45 

profess  to  hold  and  the  regeneration  they  profess  to 
have  experienced.  But  it  is  the  fault  of  the  church, 
if  from  this  time  on  they  do  not  either  become  con- 
scious of  this  hypocrisy  or  repent.  The  church,  if  it 
would  stand  for  fraternity,  must  insist  upon  the 
socialization  of  privilege.  Until  it  faces  this  duty, 
it  is  idle  for  it  to  expect  to  be  treated  seriously  by 
those  who  do  not  share  in  privileges. 

4.  Speaking  generally,  the  privileges  of  to-day's 
social  life  are  very  largely  in  the  hands  of  church 
members.  So,  to  inspire  these  privileged  Christians 
with  ideals  of  love  and  sacrifice  as  to  lead  them  to 
extend  these  privileges  would  be  one  of  the  most 
effective  ways  of  allaying  discontent  and  forestalling 
radicalism.  Will  the  church  dare  undertake  such 
preaching  of  self-sacrifice  on  the  part  of  the  winners 
in  life?  The  answer  to  this  question  will  not 
come  from  the  pulpit  as  much  as  from  the  pews. 
For  it  is  a  question  whether  the  men  who 
employ  the  minister  will  permit  him  the  free- 
dom of  the  true  prophet  of  God.  If  they  do 
not,  the  church  will  increasingly  cease  to  be  of 
significance  to  an  age  of  transition.  You  cannot 
treat  a  prophet  like  a  hired  man  and  expect  him  to 
prophesy. 

And  the  church  has  in  the  Sunday-school  an  even 


146   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

more  important  agency  than  the  pulpit  for  modify- 
ing the  attitude  of  discontent. 

A  man  interested  in  the  welfare  of  society  is  apt 
to  lose  patience  with  the  work  done  in  the  average 
Sunday-school.  It  seems  to  him  perfunctory  and 
formal,  with  lamentably  few  results  of  importance. 
Unfair  as  such  criticism  is  very  apt  to  be,  it  cannot 
be  denied  that  the  church  is  missing  an  opportunity 
in  its  failure  to  undertake  to  train  up  a  generation 
under  the  control  of  social  ideals  which  are  more 
in  accord  with  the  spirit  of  Jesus  than  are  those 
which  now  obtain  in  the  economic  and  political 
world.  In  the  Sunday-school  the  church  comes  into 
touch  with  the  leaders  of  the  next  generation  of 
economic  and  political  life  just  at  the  time  when 
they  are  most  susceptible  to  moral  and  religious  in- 
fluence. After  a  man  is  thirty-five,  it  is  practically 
hopeless  to  attempt  to  transform  him.  The  Sunday- 
school,  however,  handles  the  same  man  when  his 
character  is  in  the  making.  Why  should  it  not 
inculcate  conceptions  of  social  morality  as  well  as 
individual  morality? 

Suppose  that  for  a  series  of  years  it  were  possible 
to  utilize  the  great  machinery  of  the  Sunday-school 
to  give  the  rising  generation  broader  conceptions  of 
social  obligations,  to  teach  them  the  rudiments  of  a 


THE   CHURCH  AND   SOCIAL   DISCONTENT       I47 

social  morality  which  recognizes  the  fact  that  the 
individual  is  practically  powerless  to  undertake 
reform,  except  as  that  reform  is  buttressed  and 
guaranteed  by  a  new  social  consciousness.  Such  a 
training  would  not  minimize  the  teaching  of  the 
Bible.  It  would  rather  emphasize  the  fact  that  a 
man  cannot  be  a  Christian  in  the  truest  sense  of  the 
word,  except  as  he  is  interested  in  bringing  in  a 
social  hfe  in  which  honesty  and  kindliness  shall  not 
be  a  hindrance  to  any  legitimate  success  in  business 
and  in  politics.  The  young  men  and  women  under 
such  instruction  would  go  out  into  the  economic  and 
political  and  religious  worlds  under  the  influence  of 
conceptions  which  would  lead  them  to  a  larger 
social  cooperation.  Sanitation,  honest  legislation, 
non-materialistic  standards  of  success,  would  be 
something  more  than  mere  words  to  them.  And  as 
they  contributed  their  efforts  and  ambitions  to  the 
social  life,  it  would  be  not  in  the  interest  of  merely 
individualistic  morality,  but  in  the  true  spirit  of  the 
kingdom  of  God,  in  which  the  idea  of  brotherhood 
is  quite  as  prominent  as  the  desire  to  save  one's 
soul  in  heaven.  They  would  not  be  the  less  eager 
to  achieve  their  soul's  salvation,  but  they  would  see 
that  no  man  can  be  saved  alone;  that  because  he 
has  the  spirit  of  Christ  within  him  he  must  be  ready 


148   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

to  sacrifice  privilege  where  such  sacrifice  is  for  the 
social  weal.  They  would  see  immortal  souls  in  men 
their  fathers  could  estimate  only  as  human  machines. 
5.  The  church  can  produce  such  an  attitude  of 
mind,  if  it  will  once  go  about  it.  It  can  be  an  actual 
factor  not  so  much  in  allaying  a  social  discontent, 
which,  in  the  interest  of  the  future,  it  is  to  be  hoped 
will  not  be  allayed,  as  in  giving  to  that  discontent  a 
larger  outlook  and  more  Christ-like  ambitions.  But 
one  thing  stands  out  with  startling  clearness.  With 
such  idealism  the  church  should  never  insist  that 
the  masses  must  be  content  with  mere  submission 
to  existing  conditions.  It  should  recognize  their 
right  to  demand  a  larger  share  in  the  goods  which 
civilization  has  produced.  We  want  no  sermons  on 
the  divine  right  of  capital  any  more  than  we  want 
compromise  with  that  propaganda  of  atheistic 
materialism  which  would  seek  to  exploit  the  dis- 
content of  the  masses  in  the  interest  of  class  hatred. 
It  would  be  worse  than  foolishness  to  preach  sub- 
mission to  any  alleged  divinely  established  social 
order  to  men  and  women  whose  souls  are  on  fire 
with  the  sense  of  the  injustice  of  that  same  social 
order.  The  welfare  of  society  will  never  be  furthered 
by  making  religion  an  anaesthetic  for  social  unrest. 
It  rather  demands  that  the  church,  as  the  represen- 


THE   CHURCH  AND  SOCIAL   DISCONTENT      I49 

tative  of  Jesus  Christ  and  of  the  brotherhood  of  the 
kingdom,  shall  inculcate  self-sacrifice  as  the  duty 
of  those  of  its  members  who  belong  to  the  privileged 
classes,  and  that  it  shall  also  stimulate  a  discontent 
with  merely  materialistic  ideals  on  the  part  of  those 
among  whom  discontent  is  as  yet  almost  the  only 
evidence  of  an  awakened  idealism. 

In  brief  the  church,  by  all  its  agencies  and  such 
better  agencies  as  it  may  adopt,  must  endeavor,  on 
the  one  hand,  to  educate  its  members  to  the  point 
where  they  will  surrender  voluntarily  those  privileges 
which  are  stumbling-blocks  of  justice;  and,  on  the 
other,  it  must  seek  to  Christianize  discontent  by 
making  genuine  Christians  of  the  members  of  the 
discontented  classes.  The  gospel  of  brotherhood  [ 
and  the  gospel  of  the  risen  Christ  cannot  be  dis- 
sociated in  any  evangelism  that  would  do  more 
than  save  individuals  from  a  world  abandoned  to 
greed  and  strife  and  godless  materialism. 

Is  not  such  an  evangelization  of  the  individual  and 
of  society  a  responsibiUty  large  enough  for  the  best 
endeavors  of  a  united  church  ?  Does  it  not  rebuke  that 
mutual  criticism  which  keeps  so  many  of  us  apart? 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  SOCIAL  MOVEMENT 

Discontent  is  the  dynamic  of  the  social  move- 
ment. It  expresses  itself  in  that  uprising  against 
social  miseries  that  already  amounts  to  a  new 
crusade,  and  which,  from  every  point  of  view,  is 
critical  for  both  the  church  and  society. 

What  is  the  social  movement?  Without  defining 
all  its  various  phases,  it  may  be  said  to  be  an  attempt 
now  being  made  throughout  Europe  and  America  to 
bring  greater  happiness  and  possibility  to  the  life  of 
the  so-called  masses.  It  is  discontent  at  work  in 
the  changing  order.  In  its  most  energetic  form 
it  appears  as  labor  agitation,  labor  organization, 
philanthropic  institutions  like  social  settlements, 
reforms  of  various  kinds,  and,  as  much  as  in  any- 
thing, in  socialism.  In  such  a  ubiquitous  and  varied 
movement  there  are  many  things  to  condemn,  many 
persons  insincere.  Social  settlements  and  "slum- 
ming" too  often  supplant  Browning  societies  as  mere 
diversions  of  the  hour ;  bescriptured  philosophy  and 
crude  generalization  about  the  social  organism  very 
ISO 


THE   CHURCH  AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT      151 

often  masquerade  as  sociology;  but  back  of  all  such 
conscious  or  unconscious  shams  there  is  a  deter- 
mination to  obtain  social  betterment  that  is  not 
superficial,  but  sincere,  and  even  passionate.  It  is 
idealism  working  out  in  life. 


It  would  seem  as  if  there  would  be  cooperation 
between  such  a  movement  and  the  church  as  a 
representative  of  the  social  teaching  of  Jesus,  but 
the  alarming  fact  obtrudes  itseK  that  the  relation  of 
the  two  is  one  of  mutual  ignorance  and  distrust. 
On  the  part  of  the  churches  there  is  too  little  effort 
to  imderstand  and  to  sympathize  with  the  movement 
among  the  masses.  Here  and  there,  it  is  true,  men 
with  the  spirit  of  Maurice  and  Kingsley  have  en- 
deavored to  capture  socialism  bodily  for  the  church. 
But  such  efforts  have  met  with  only  partial  success 
—  the  difficulty  lying  quite  as  much  with  the  clergy 
as  with  the  labor  leaders.  And  so  it  has  come  to 
pass  that  the  two  great  altruistic  movements  of  the 
century  have  refused  cooperation,  mistrusting  each 
other  to-day  almost  as  much  as  in  the  past;  and, 
in  consequence,  each  has  lost  the  other's  aid. 

Earnest  and  noble  as  is  the  movement  among  the 
masses,  it  is  suspicious,  if  not  the  enemy,  of  the 


152   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

churches.  It  is,  in  part,  the  frank  expression  of  this 
fact  that  has  caused  so  much  ecclesiastical  hostiUty 
to  social  leaders,  the  churches  being  convinced  that 
no  good  could  come  from  men  it  has  judged  violent 
and  blasphemous.  Yet  a  closer  knowledge  of  the 
actual  attitude  of  the  masses  and  their  leaders  might 
have  led,  and  yet  must  lead,  to  a  better  understanding. 

The  essentials  of  one  age  are  often  the  bric-a-brac 
of  its  successor.  The  spinning-wheels  and  swords 
which  were  to  our  ancestors  the  symbols  of  toil  and 
adventure,  and  even  life  itself,  fill  museums  and 
adorn  the  walls  of  reception-rooms.  Their  mission 
is  past,  and  an  age  which  they  created,  but  by  which 
they  have  been  outgrown,  regards  them  with  curios- 
ity rather  than  reverence.  Similarly,  to  many  men 
working  at  the  cost  of  infinite  sacrifice  for  their  less 
fortunate  fellows,  the  churches  are  pieces  of  bric-k- 
brac.  Useful  in  the  life  of  the  past,  doubtless  of 
the  utmost  value  as  agents  in  the  production  of  the 
life  of  to-day,  they  are  now  judged  no  longer  needed. 
The  age  is  believed  to  have  outgrown  them,  except 
as  reminders  of  a  less  perfect  civilization. 

But  here  one  meets  a  phenomenon  hard  for  the 
man  reared  in  the  atmosphere  of  traditional  evangeli- 
calism to  credit. 

Anti-ecclesiastical  and  even   unreligious   as    the 


THE   CHURCH  AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT      1 53 

movement  among  the  masses  may  be,  its  Messianic 
hope  in  the  future  is  the  creature  of  Christianity. 
Discontent,  be  it  remembered,  is  the  child  of  idealism. 
The  demand  for  human  betterment  springs  from  a 
belief  in  the  worth  of  the  individual  that  is  the  gift, 
not  of  the  primitive  German,  but  of  the  Christian. 
Has  not  organized  Christianity,  through  all  its 
devious  and  too  often  unholy  ways,  held  up  the 
ideal  of  brotherhood?  What  period  in  which 
aristocracy  has  lifted  its  head  without  or  within  the 
church  but  has  had  also  its  St.  Francis  ready  to 
cast  away  home  and  parents  and  very  garments  in 
devotion  of  Christian  fraternity?  In  this  light,  the 
hostihty  of  the  social  movement  to  the  church  is  an 
Indian  mutiny,  in  which  men  trained  by  imperial 
masters,  in  the  name  of  love  and  justice,  are  turn- 
ing their  newly  acquired  discipline  against  their 
teachers.  But  for  this  reason,  if  for  no  other,  the 
church  of  to-day  must  do  something  more  than 
complacently  praise  its  past  and  optimistically  dream 
of  its  future,  if  it  would  not  see  too  late  that  its 
influence  and  power  have  passed  into  other  hands, 
less  inteUigent,  perhaps,  but  quicker  to  come  to  the 
aid  of  a  discontented  race. 

This  is  no  rhetorical  crisis,  painted  black  that 
presently  the  certain  victory  of  the  church  may  be 


154   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

the  more  brilliantly  set  forth.  There  are,  happily, 
many  churches  and  clergymen  excepted  from  such 
distrust,  but  even  with  this  allowance,  one  cannot 
say  that  the  situation  has  been  overdrawn.  One 
cannot  overlook  the  disposition  among  social  writers 
to  regard  religion  itself  as  a  merely  temporary  basis 
of  ethics ;  the  constant  tendency  of  our  churches  to 
follow  the  line  of  social  cleavage;  the  decay  of 
country  churches;  the  growth  of  Ethical  Culture 
Societies.  Such  facts  do  not  portend  the  end  of 
Christian  morality.  The  ethical  teachings  of  Jesus 
must  stand  and  be  operative  as  long  as  goodness  is 
better  than  badness,  and  love  more  advantageous 
than  hate.  Nor  is  there  any  likelihood  that  churches 
as  institutions  will  disappear.  The  danger  is  lest, 
the  churches  as  religious  organizations  thall  cease 
to  be  of  any  social  service  or  significance. 

And  this  brings  us  to  the  heart  of  the  matter. 
Without  attempting  to  justify  this  criticism  or  to 
eulogize  or  blame  the  discontent  from  which  it 
springs,  let  us  put  the  matter  frankly  and  distinctly : 
Is  such  distrust  legitimate  ?  Is  the  Christian  church 
as  a  social  institution  to  have  any  significance  for  a 
movement  which  is  preeminently  ambitious  to  elevate 
the  masses  that  as  yet  have  had  comparatively  little 
share  in  a  Christian  civilization  ? 


THE   CHURCH  AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT      155 
II 

The  conditions  of  the  problem  themselves  indicate 
the  responsibiliLies  of  the  church.  It  must  recognize 
that  its  fundamental  mission  is  dynamic,  and  not 
regulative.  "Sometimes,"  says  Mr.  Bryce  in  his 
"  American  Commonwealth,"  "standing  in  the  midst 
of  a  great  American  city  .  .  .  one  is  startled  by  the 
thought  of  what  might  befall  this  huge,  yet  delicate, 
fabric  of  laws  and  commerce  and  social  institutions 
were  the  foundation  it  has  rested  on  to  crumble 
away.  Suppose  that  all  these  men  ceased  to  believe 
there  was  any  power  above  them,  any  future  before 
them,  anything  in  heaven  or  earth  but  what  their 
senses  told  them  of;  ...  .  Would  men  say,  'Let 
us  eat  and  drink,  for  to-morrow  we  die '  ?  Or  would 
custom,  and  sympathy,  and  a  perception  of  the 
advantages  which  stable  government  oflFers  to  the 
citizens,  as  a  whole,  and  which  orderly  self-restraint 
offers  to  each  one,  replace  supernatural  sanctions 
and  hold  in  check  the  violence  of  masses  and  the 
self-indulgent  impulses  of  the  individual?  History, 
if  she  cannot  give  a  complete  answer  to  this  ques- 
tion, tells  us  that  hitherto  civilized  society  has  rested 
on  religion,  and  that  free  government  has  prospered 
best  among  religious  peoples." 


156   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

The  truth  in  this  generalization  is  obvious,  but  it 
is  only  partial.  The  significance  of  the  church  to 
society  is  something  more  than  that  of  a  check  upon 
crime  and  materialism.  Its  mission  is  not  that  of  a 
policeman. 

Even  the  authority  of  tradition,  for  which  the 
church  has  been  commonly  held  to  stand,  is  but 
regulative  and  conservative,  too  often  quick  to  hold 
by  the  form  while  despising  the  spirit.  Precedent  is 
the  stumbling-block  as  well  as  the  foundation  of 
progress.  However  much  one  may  appreciate  the 
service  which  the  Roman  church  rendered  civiliza- 
tion in  furnishing  the  immutable  centre  about  which 
for  centuries  the  elements  of  a  new  Europe  might 
gather ;  however  much  one  may  honor  that  devotion 
to  the  persistent  elements  of  religious  life  that  finds 
its  expression  in  the  Anglican's  devotion  to  his 
prayer-book  and  bishop;  however  much  one  may 
honor  the  steady  independence  and  passive  resist- 
ance of  Nonconformists,  one  must  at  the  same  time 
say  that,  in  the  same  proportion  as  he  has  pre- 
ferred to  check  rather  than  create  Christian  impulses, 
Catholic,  Anglican,  and  Nonconformist,  has  been  un- 
true to  the  highest  conception  of  the  duty  owed  by 
the  church  to  the  society  in  which  he  lived.  If 
religious  tradition  be  all  for  which  the  church  can 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  SOCIAL   MOVEMENT     157 

stand  in  society,  it  will  be  hard,  indeed,  to  prophesy 
its  perpetuity.  To  plead  its  power  to  conserve  states 
is  possible  only  after  one  has  established  other  and 
stronger  presumptions  in  its  favor.  It  cannot  be 
content  to  make  good  citizens.  It  must  make  good 
men.  That  which  is  the  salt  of  the  earth  is  like- 
wise to  be  its  leaven. 

•  In  the  division  of  labor  that  characterizes  society 
to-day,  the  school,  the  state,  the  bank,  has  its  special 
duties.  In  the  same  way  the  church,  as  the  plain 
purport  of  the  words  of  Paul  implies,  has  but  one 
supreme  mission,  and  that  is  the  religious.  How- 
ever much  a  church  may  employ  charitable  organi- 
zations, amusements,  employment  bureaus,  a  con- 
sciousness of  this  spiritual  mission  must  be  its 
coordinating  and  unifying  force.  It  is  to  the  honor 
of  most  "institutional  churches,"  so  needed  in  every 
city  and  country  town,  that,  even  more  clearly  than 
many  of  the  older  sort,  they  make  religion  supreme. 
But  to  make  a  church  a  religionless  mixture  of  civil- 
service  reform,  debating  societies,  gymnasiums, 
suppers,  concerts,  stereopticon  lectures,  good  advice, 
refined  negro  minstrel  shows,  and  dramatic  enter- 
tainments, is  to  bring  it  into  competition  with  the 
variety  theatre.  And  when  the  masses  have  to 
choose  between  that  sort  of  church  and  its  rival,  if 


158   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

they  have  any  sense  left  within  their  perplexed  heads, 
they  will  choose  the  variety  theatre.  That,  at  least, 
is  performing  its  proper  social  function, 

III 

The  church  should  not  cheapen  or  underrate  its 
social  significance.  As  a  religious  organization  it  is 
especially  fitted  to  educate  and  direct  the  social  im- 
pulses, both  within  itself  and  within  society  at  large. 
And  in  two  ways :  by  enforcing  regard  for  law,  and 
by  guaranteeing  sanity  in  reform. 

I.  It  can  keep  social  impulses  law-abiding. 

Periods  of  transition,  we  are  repeatedly  told,  may 
easily  become  revolutionary;  but  quite  as  danger- 
ous, in  some  ways  more  dangerous,  to  a  society  than 
open  revolution  is  the  spirit  of  contempt  for  law. 
Our  day  is  marked  by  a  decrease  in  actual  armed 
revolts,  but,  none  the  less,  law  is  still  held  in  too 
little  regard.  As  it  is  made  with  astonishing  ease 
and  volume,  so  is  it  as  easily  and  universally  despised. 
A  governor  of  Illinois  once  declared  that  he  proposed 
to  prevent  by  force  a  mining  company's  importa- 
tion of  negro  workmen  into  Virden,  Illinois,  on  the 
ground  that  it  is  sometimes  necessary  for  an  execu- 
tive of  a  state  to  enforce  law  in  advance  of  its  legisla- 
tive enactment,  while  the  labor  officers  maintained 


THE    CHURCH   AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT      1 59 

that  they  might  resort  to  bloodshed  because  the 
company  had  no  right  to  import  bad  negroes  as 
substitutes  for  strikers.  Company,  men,  negroes, 
governor,  so  far  as  newspaper  accounts  can  be 
trusted,  carried  on  their  struggle  as  if  laws  might  be 
enforced  or  forgotten  to  suit  one's  need.  In  our 
cities,  municipal  statutes  are  ignored  and  broken 
by  those  who  have  "  pulls,"  while  many  a  law-abiding 
citizen  has  been,  wittingly  or  unwittingly,  an  acces- 
sory to  forgery  in  the  use  of  railroad  tickets  bought 
of  "scalpers." 

This  superiority  to  the  will  of  society  which 
justij&es  disobedience,  whenever  disobedience  ap- 
pears desirable,  is  especially  characteristic  of  those 
persons  who  are  the  avowed  champions  of  society. 
Sometimes,  indeed,  the  individuaUstic  spirit  is  un- 
disguised, and  we  have  anarchists  pure  and  simple. 
But  men  who  are  not  anarchists  do  not  hesitate  to 
hold  the  will  of  the  individual  superior  to  the  will  of 
a  conmiunity. 

To  such  a  spirit  the  church  as  a  social  institution 
has  something  better  to  impart  than  ethical  plati- 
tudes. It,  too,  has  suffered  from  unrighteous  laws; 
it,  too,  has  felt  the  pressure  of  its  own  ideals  pushing 
it  toward  a  disregard  of  law.  Sometimes,  per- 
haps, it  has  too  much  yielded  to  the  power  of  prece- 


l6o   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

dent  and  to  God-ordained  powers.  But  its  slowness 
in  rising  against  injustice  has  been  the  deliberation 
of  preparation.  Not  by  violence  or  contempt  of 
law  has  it  been  resultful,  but  by  a  patience  that  has 
linked  submission  with  such  transforming  power 
that  unjust  laws  have  been  repealed  or  have  fallen 
into  desuetude,  to  be  replaced  by  others  breathing 
mercy  and  justice.  Perishing  by  the  sword,  its 
chief  victories  have  been  won  by  peace  and  love. 
The  blood  of  its  mart5n:s  has  been  the  seed  of  new 
legislation  and  new  government. 

Nor  could  it  be  otherwise.  That  recognition  of 
the  whole  of  things  which  is  the  metaphysical  formula 
for  religion  does  not  permit  the  man  who  has  come 
within  the  influence  of  the  church  to  arrogate  to 
himself  discretionary  power  as  to  what  laws  should 
be  obeyed  and  what  may  be  disobeyed.  Authority 
always  is  an  element  in  religion.  In  part,  it  is  be- 
cause of  the  deep  reverence  felt  by  the  church  for 
law  as  the  earthly  analogue  of  the  will  of  God  that 
radicals  oppose  it,  slandering  it  as  committed  to 
reaction,  because  it  refuses  to  join  in  an  orgy  of 
iconoclasm. 

But  who  dares  say  that  in  its  reverence  for  law, 
the  church  is  wrong?  Better  a  law-abiding  spirit 
and  bad  laws  than  anarchy,  however  disguised  or 


THE   CHURCH  AND  THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT      l6l 

procrastinating.  If  there  is  one  lesson  above  all 
others  that  social  enthusiasts  need  to  leam,  it  is  that 
bom  of  the  church's  experience:  a  regard  for  law, 
even  though  it  be  unjust  law,  is  the  first  guarantee  of 
progress,  of  legal  reform,  and  of  the  permanence  of 
the  good  law  that  must  inevitably  replace  the  bad. 

Besides  the  church,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  there  is 
no  institution,  state  or  school,  court  or  prison, 
capable  by  history,  nature,  ideals,  and  martyrs,  of 
enforcing  this  unpalatable  but  indispensable  truth. 

The  church  must  do  something,  if  possible,  even 
more  difficult  than  stir  the  individual  conscience.  It 
must  champion  obedience  to  existing  law.  Theo- 
retically, of  course,  this  is  easy.  Practically,  it  is 
one  of  the  most  perplexing  problems  which  morality 
faces.  It  is  easy  for  men  not  readily  responsive  to 
moral  ideals  in  themselves  to  evade  the  law.  It  is 
not  so  long  that  America,  at  least,  has  taken  legislation 
very  seriously.  It  has  always  been  possible,  and  to  a 
certain  extent  held  to  be  justifiable,  for  large  interests 
to  manipulate  law-making  and  to  evade  law  when 
once  made.  A  virile  church  must  set  its  face  in- 
flexibly against  such  an  attitude  of  mind.  Not  that 
it  should  justify  all  legislation,  or  that  it  should 
attempt  to  sit  as  a  court  of  appeals  in  the  conflict  of 
legal  interests.    Its  office  is  rather  that  of  develop- 


1 62   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

ing  a  social  conscience  that  shall,  on  the  one  side, 
protect  men  and  corporations  from  the  sandbagging 
legislator  and  "organizations"  so  frequent  in  our 
legislatures;  and,  on  the  other,  of  insisting  that 
Christian  men,  whether  they  be  ^ch  or  poor,  shall 
not  be  practical  anarchists.  A  transitional  period 
that  belittles  or  is  contemptuous  of  law  cannot 
expect  its  successor  to  be  law-abiding. 

But  will  the  church  stand  for  such  regard  for  law  ? 
Is  not  religion  itself  losing  that  fear  of  the  Lord 
that  used  to  be  regarded  as  the  beginning  of  wisdom  ? 
Democracy  is  stretching  over  into  religion.  In 
olden  days  God  elected  men;  now  men  elect  Him. 
Fatherhood  to  the  ancient  world  meant  authority  as 
truly  as  love.  Nowadays  men  are  tempted  to  treat 
God  as  a  fellow- democrat. 

This  matter  means  as  much  to  the  social  move- 
ment as  to  theology.  The  idea  of  authority  must  be 
refurnished  religion.  Only  it  cannot  be  the  authority 
of  the  king ;  it  must  be  that  of  universal  Will.  Herein 
lies  one  call  for  the  church  to  cooperate  with  Science. 
The  leaders  of  the  social  movement  have  little 
patience  with  a  sovereign  God,  but  they  know  the 
meaning  of  Natural  Law.  The  God  of  the  church 
must  be  the  God  of  the  universe  —  of  the  entire 
universe.    He  must  be  too  great  for  a  rising  democ- 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT      163 

racy  to  dethrone.  Once  let  the  church  stand  posi- 
tively for  such  a  God  who  is  both  Law  and  Love, 
and  it  will  have  something  to  contribute  to  the 
present  social  movement  in  fact  as  truly  as  in  theory. 
A  mediaeval  church  preaching  a  mediaeval  theology 
will  be  the  laughing-stock  of  social  leaders  who  are 
dominated  by  modem  scientific  concepts  of  law. 

Yet  the  indifference  shown  by  men  who  would 
not  think  of  breaking  laws  intended  to  regulate 
individual  relations  to  laws  affecting  a  community 
or  corporation  is  one  of  the  astounding  anomalies  of 
the  religious  life.  Sometimes  this  lawlessness  is 
the  expression  of  downright  hypocrisy ;  more  often, 
however,  I  am  inclined  to  think,  it  is  the  outcome  of 
a  perverted  notion  of  the  relations  of  the  citizens  to 
the  state.  We  have  not  yet  outgrown  that  carica- 
ture of  democracy  which  springs  from  the  logical 
fallacy  that  because  the  people  are  sovereign,  every 
man  is  a  sovereign.  Our  religious  teachers  them- 
selves are  so  possessed  of  individualistic  concepts 
of  morality  as  to  be  abundantly  able  to  see  motes 
and  beams  in  men's  eyes,  and,  at  the  same  time,  be 
unable  to  discover  that  an  entire  people,  including 
themselves,  are  as  yet  partially  blind  to  social  morality. 

I  have  in  mind  a  certain  pastor  who  counts  smoking 
a  sin,  and  the  Sunday  newspaper  an  unspeakable 


164   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

iniquity,  but  who  so  trims  his  message  that  a  man 
who  grew  rich  by  going  into  bankruptcy  after 
putting  his  property  into  his  wife's  hands  feels  no 
twinges  of  conscience  in  listening  to  a  discussion  of 
what  he  misnames  "the  old  gospel."  I  heard  once 
of  an  evangelist  who  was  a  converted  thief.  By 
some  means  he  was  able  to  recover  from  another 
thief  stolen  property  for  which  the  police  of  a  cer- 
tain city  had  searched  in  vain.  In  gratitude  for  his 
assistance  the  chief  of  police  of  that  city  told  him 
that,  although  it  was  contrary  to  law  to  have  preach- 
ing on  the  street,  he  might  use  the  best  comer  in 
the  city  and  be  free  from  police  interference.  The 
gentleman  who  told  me  this  story  declared  that  the 
evangelist  preached  for  weeks  at  this  comer  in  con- 
travention of  municipal  law.  The  fact  that,  thanks 
to  police  protection,  his  relation  to  the  law  was 
precisely  that  of  a  dive-keeper  who  also,  though 
from  quite  other  reasons,  was  given  police  protec- 
tion, was  beyond  the  perception  of  either  my  in- 
formant or  the  evangelist. 

If  the  entire  church  were  thus  to  couple  law- 
breaking  with  soul  saving,  what  hope  of  social 
leadership  would  there  lie  within  it?  The  social 
movement  needs  no  spur  to  contempt  for  laws 
capitalism  itself  makes  or  disregards. 


THE   CHURCH  AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT      165 

2.  The  church,  better  than  any  other  popular  in-| 
stitution,  is  calculated  to  guarantee  sanity  in  reform.! 
One  real  danger  that  threatens  to-day's  life  is  un- 
employed reformers.  From  all  sides  they  come. 
Young  women  on  fire  to  prevent  the  abuse  of  chil- 
dren by  cruel  and  tyrannical  parents;  college  men 
and  women  who  long  to  win  the  submerged  tenth 
to  sweetness  and  light  and  the  appreciation  of  art 
by  residence  in  a  university  settlement  during  three 
weeks  in  the  winter;  men  with  all  sorts  of  social 
panaceas,  from  a  new  method  of  reading  music  at 
sight  to  tin  dinner  pails ;  temperance  reformers  who 
tremble  for  the  nation  if  a  war  vessel  is  christened 
with  champagne ;  diet,  drink,  clothes,  house,  school, 
church,  Bible,  street-cleaning  reformers  —  all  promis- 
ing millennia,  and  all  taking  themselves  seriously. 
Far  be  it  from  any  one  to  disparage  the  motives  of 
such  enthusiasts,  but,  with  the  remembrance  of  the 
similar  altruistic  hysteria  that  preceded  the  French 
Revolution  of  1789,  one  cannot  help  seeing  the 
danger  that  lies  in  unregulated  and  visionary  amateur 
philanthropy.  Far  more  worthy  of  serious  study  is 
the  danger  attending  the  fanaticism  of  professional 
reformers.  Millennial  programmes  are  easy  to  print, 
but  as  difficult  as  the  genius  of  the  "Arabian  Nights" 
to  control  —  if,  indeed,  they  once  miss  the  broad  way 


1 66   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

leading  to  the  limbo  of  impracticability.  The  con- 
servative is  not  mistaken  when  he  sees  in  their 
champions  not  merely  earnest  men  and  women 
striving  for  the  good  of  mankind,  but  possible  social 
firebrands.  Agitators  are  indispensable,  but  an 
agitator  mad  with  altruism  is  as  dangerous  as  any 
other  madman. 

Perhaps  an  acquaintance  with  such  facts  should 
have  made  surprise  impossible,  but  none  the  less  it 
is  surprising  that  leaders  in  the  social  movement 
should  not  have  seen  how  extravagance  injures  their 
cause.  An  admirable  evidence  of  this  fact,  as  well 
as  of  the  efficiency  of  sane  efforts  at  reform,  is  to  be 
seen  in  the  history  of  woman's  suffrage.  Perhaps  a 
better  illustration  is  to  be  seen  in  the  history  of 
socialism  in  Russia.  But  the  socialist  himself  can 
learn  lessons  in  the  methodology  of  social  reform 
from  the  church.  With  all  its  demands,  sociafism 
to-day  proposes  nothing  like  the  radical  change  in 
society  accomplished  by  Jesus  when  he  swept  away 
Mosaism ;  nor  does  any  declaration  of  the  rights  of 
man  contain  more  than  a  shadow  of  the  equality 
that  bursts  out  in  the  words  of  the  apostolic  radical 
of  the  first  century  who  confronted  an  age  steeped 
in  slavery  and  inequahty  with  the  Magna  Charta  of 
a  new  age :  in  Christ  there  is  neither  Jew  nor  Greek, 


THE   CHURCH  AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT      167 

male  nor  female,  bond  nor  free.  Yet  in  Jesus  and 
in  Paul,  radicalism  in  teaching  was  tempered  by 
sanity  in  method.  Jesus  dared  to  lay  down  his 
life  and  —  what  must  have  been  harder  —  the  life 
of  his  followers,  while  preventing  a  revolutionary 
and  unintelhgent  effort  to  realize  his  new  social 
order.  Paul  sent  the  converted  slave  Onesimus 
back  to  his  Christian  master,  and  counselled  women 
not  to  let  their  equality  deprive  them  of  veils. 

The  spirit  of  the  early  church  was  equally  sane, 
and  its  sanity,  quite  as  much  as  its  love,  carried  its 
regenerating  influence  from  the  upper  room  in 
Jerusalem  to  every  comer  of  the  Roman  Empire. 
As  a  social  institution,  while  as  earnest  as  any 
group  of  men  in  the  world,  the  church  still  can  show 
men  that,  if  individualism  is  not  anarchy,  reform  is 
not  that  virtue  of  madmen,  iconoclasm.  From  the 
days  when  Paul  counselled  his  Corinthian  brethren 
not  to  turn  their  prayer-meetings  into  bedlams, 
down  through  the  days  of  Ambrose  agitating  and 
yet  restraining  the  masses  of  Milan;  the  mediaeval 
church  tempering  universal  feud  by  the  truce  of 
God;  St.  Bernard  directing  the  mihtary  spirit  of 
empires;  Thomas  k  Becket  defying  the  passions  of 
a  hot-headed  Enghshman;  Luther  denouncing  the 
extravagances  of  a  Peasants'  Revolt;  Wesley  utiliz- 


l68  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

ing  the  enthusiasms  of  Methodism;  and  Moody 
bridling  the  impetuosity  of  college  students,  the 
church  has  said,  by  word  and  example :  Let  reforms 
come;  make  reforms  come;  but  let  everything  be 
done  decently  and  in  order.  Until  there  can  be 
shown  some  other  social  institution  or  movement 
which  can  boast  an  equal  record  of  permanent  social 
reforms,  —  of  slavery  ended,  of  life  protected,  of 
woman  ennobled,  of  children  educated,  of  homes 
sanctified,  of  schools,  and  missions,  and  charities, 
and  martyrs,  —  your  social  reformer  had  best  give 
himseK  a  course  in  church  history.  There  he  will 
learn  something  of  the  effectiveness  that  comes  to  a 
reform  through  the  sanity  bred  within  the  Christian 
church  he  affects  to  regard  as  outgrown.  Contempt 
is  here  the  sign  manual  of  ignorance  and  conceit. 

But  here  again  we  must  challenge  the  church  of 
to-day  to  be  worthy  the  church  of  the  past.  Not 
that  there  is  any  danger  that  it  shall  be  overzealous 
for  reform,  but  that  it  may  mistake  indifference  and 
the  spirit  of  laissez-jaire  for  sanity.  If  it  is  to  bring 
sanity  into  the  social  movement,  it  must  get  into 
touch  with  that  movement.  Preaching  by  itself  will 
accomplish  little.  The  church  must  put  the  spirit 
of  brotherhood  and  sacrifice  into  every  one  of  its 
members,  and  particularly  into  those  who  are  in 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT      169 

touch  with  the  unprivileged  masses.  A  Christian 
employer  or  a  Christian  member  of  a  labor  union  is 
a  point  of  contact  between  the  church  with  the 
changing  order.  Christian  ideals  must  be  incarnate 
in  Christian  men  before  social  forces  will  be  Chris- 
tianized. Sobriety  in  reform  is  a  possible  gift  of 
the  church  only  when  the  church  can  sober  reformers. 

IV 

The  church  must  aid  the  social  movement  by 
emphasizing  its  own  method  of  social  regeneration. 

Within  the  region  of  philosophy  there  are  few 
questions  more  delicate  or  elusive  than  those  which 
concern  the  relations  of  the  individual  to  society. 
Indeed,  one  might  almost  say  that  the  terms  them- 
selves are  still  in  search  of  definition.  None  the  less, 
two  things  are  increasingly  evident;  the  individual 
is  of  worth,  and  the  individual  is  complete,  only  as 
his  life  is  joined  with  the  lives  of  others.  These  two 
considerations  are  at  present  claimed  as  among  the 
chief  foundations  of  the  multicolored  social  philoso- 
phy and  social  propaganda  which  go  under  the 
name  of  socialism,  and  it  is  the  earnestness  of  the 
socialist's  efforts,  on  the  one  hand  to  convince  society 
at  large  that  the  proletariat  has  souls,  and  on  the 
other  to  raise  society  as  a  unit  into  a  good-natured 


lyo   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

deity,  that  gives  them  much  of  their  efficiency.  Now, 
with  economic  programmes  of  all  sorts,  a  church  as  an 
organization,  if  it  be  wise,  will  have  nothing  to  do; 
but  with  socialism's  demand  for  economic  justice, 
and  its  unquenchable  determination  to  secure  for 
all,  however  humble,  the  rights  and  enjoyments  of 
common  humanity;  with  its  insistence  upon  fra- 
ternity, —  a  church  is  profoundly  concerned.  For  — 
it  may  well  be  repeated  —  the  spirit  that  lies  back  of 
this  better  ambition  of  socialism  is  the  child  of  the 
Christian  church  —  a  prodigal,  perhaps,  strayed  far 
from  home  and  into  strange  companionship,  but 
none  the  less  a  child. 

But  the  Christian  church  has  a  doctrine  of  the 
individual  that  no  hard  and  fast  system  of  socialism, 
however  noble  and  ethical,  can  duplicate,  if,  indeed, 
as  a  matter  of  self-preservation,  accept.  The  final 
test  of  a  system's  worth  lies  not  so  much  in  what  it 
proposes  as  in  what  it  presupposes.  Socialism  and 
Christianity  are  alike  in  that  they  are  both  laboring 
for  a  new  and  higher  social  order,  in  which  all  — 
men,  women,  and  children  —  shall  live  better  and 
happier  lives;  but  they  are  unhke  in  the  position 
each  takes  as  to  the  relation  of  these  individuals  to 
society.  Although  there  is  untruth  in  any  antith- 
esis, the  difference  can  be  roughly  stated  as  this; 


THE   CHURCH  AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT      1 71 

socialism  expects  society  to  make  good  individuals; 
Jesus  expects  good  individuals  to  make  a  good 
society.  The  untruth  in  such  an  antithesis  lies  in 
its  disregard  of  the  fact  that  socialism  does  not 
ignore  the  need  of  an  ethical  basis  of  social  life,  and 
of  the  other  fact  that  Christianity  is  oblivious  neither 
of  the  influence  of  environment  nor  of  the  need  of 
law.  But  after  this  common  element  has  been 
eliminated,  the  differences  in  the  presuppositions 
may  still  be  stated  in  terms  of  the  individual :  social- 
ism assumes  that  the  individual  must  be  raised 
through  his  connection  with  a  better  social  order; 
Christianity  assumes  that  it  is  impossible  to  have 
a  good  social  order  composed  of  bad  men.  Thus 
the  point  of  attack,  so  to  speak,  is,  in  the  case  of 
socialism,  environment,  and  in  the  case  of  Chris- 
tianity, the  individual. 

Now,  at  this  point  one  is  likely  to  be  prejudiced, 
if,  like  the  writer,  he  is  not  a  sociaHst.  There  are, 
of  course.  Christians  who  are  socialists,  and  —  what 
is  quite  another  matter  —  socialists  who  are  Chris- 
tians. Indeed,  it  is  not  uncommon  to  hear  men 
identify  socialism  and  Christianity.  But  after  guard- 
ing, as  best  I  can,  against  prejudice,  and  judging  the 
two  from  their  most  significant  elements,  if  words 
mean  anything  and  there  be  any  distinction  between 


172   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

the  two,  Christianity  seems  more  capable  of  pro- 
ducing permanent  social  betterment  than  does 
socialism.  The  church  has  chosen  the  slower  and 
more  difficult  method;  for  it  is  always  easier  to 
attempt  reform  by  legislation  than  by  the  education 
and  conversion  of  individual  lives.  It  would,  in- 
deed, be  untrue  to  facts  to  say  that  much  good  can- 
not be  accomplished  by  legislation  that  expresses 
the  sentiments  of  an  intelligent  and  righteous 
minority,  but  a  study  of  such  reformatory  and  pro- 
hibitive legislation  will  convince  any  man  that  it 
succeeds  in  something  like  the  proportion  as  the  in- 
fluential men  of  a  community  are  in  sympathy  with 
its  objects.  There  is  here  not  merely  a  question  of 
a  regard  for  law  sufficient  to  lead  to  its  conventional 
enforcement,  but  also  the  question  as  to  whether  a 
good  law  enforced  by  a  part  of  a  community  is 
ideally  so  desirable  as  such  an  elevation  in  the  per- 
sonal character  of  each  citizen  as  makes  such  a  law 
unnecessary.  If  it  be  replied  that  the  social  will 
must  always  be  in  advance  of  a  considerable  number 
of  individuals,  the  original  question  is  again  pre- 
sented: granted  such  must  be  the  case,  which  is 
likely  to  be  of  more  permanent  social  service,  a 
belief  that  the  chief  effort  should  be  made  to  make 
the  individual  good  through  social  environment,  or 


THE   CHURCH  AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT      1 73 

to  produce  such  men  and  women  as  will  themselves 
constitute  a  proper  society?  It  is  easy  to  reply  that 
both  are  needed,  but  such  an  answer  leaves  the 
point  at  issue  undecided,  and  if  the  alternative  be 
frankly  met  as  it  actually  exists,  the  answer  seems  to 
favor  the  philosophy  of  the  church.  Its  method  has 
one  great  advantage.  Utopias  presuppose  Uto- 
pians, and  the  church  undertakes  the  production  of 
Utopians. 

And  in  another  particular  the  social  doctrine  of 
the  church  is  superior  in  its  practical  bearings  upon 
the  individual  to  that  of  socialism.  I  know  that  the 
socialist  will  strenuously  deny  the  statement,  but, 
do  the  best  it  can  to  avoid  the  criticism,  socialism  is 
essentially  an  economic  system  and  approaches  the 
individual  life  with  much  the  same  presupposition 
as  did  the  older  political  economy  it  assails.  And 
that  presupposition  is  the  existence  of  an  "economic 
man."  In  a  word,  socialism  says  this:  Make  the 
economic  man  prosperous,  and  the  moral,  the 
altruistic,  the  intellectual,  the  aesthetic,  and  (as  a 
concession)  the  religious,  man  will  inevitably  be  pros- 
perous. Here  again  indiscriminate  criticism  is  un- 
wise. No  one  can  deny  the  influence  of  economic 
conditions  upon  the  character  of  men,  and  the  Chris- 
tian who  follows  the  better  impulses  of  his  nature 


174   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

will  make  common  cause  with  any  rational  effort 
at  producing  greater  economic  equality.  Indeed, 
if  once  socialism  as  a  merely  economic  programme 
according  to  which  some  or  all  industries  were  to 
become  socialized,  were  seen  to  be  just  and  best, 
there  is  no  reason  why  Christians  should  not  accept 
it.  But  as  homeopathy  as  practised  to-day  is  one 
thing,  and  homeopathy  as  Hahnemann  worked  it 
out  is  another,  so  socialism  as  a  form  of  economic 
life  and  socialism  as  an  all-embracing  philosophy 
of  social  reform  are  not  to  be  confounded.  Good 
economic  surroundings,  so  far  as  ordinary  observa- 
tion shows,  are  in  no  way  the  guarantee  of  good  or 
even  contented  men,  and,  as  a  working  theory  of  life 
the  position  of  Jesus  is  not  only  more  philosophical, 
but  more  practicable:  "Seek  first  the  kingdom  of 
God  and  His  righteousness,  and  food,  clothes,  and 
creature  comforts  will  follow."  It  may  very  well 
be  that  a  thoroughly  Christian  civilization  will  be  — 
at  least  partially  —  socialistic.  It  is  not  so  clear 
that  a  socialistic  state  would  be  Christian. 

At  the  same  time  it  must  be  granted  that,  as  both 
are  to-day,  the  church  has  much  to  learn  from 
socialism.  It  is  hard  to  say  it,  but  the  church  has 
hardly  yet  the  clear  vision  which  enables  socialism 
to  see  the  moral  aspects  of  to-day's  economic  life. 


THE   CHURCH  AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT     1 75 

But  to  say  this  is  not  to  give  up  the  church,  or  to 
despair  of  the  salvability  or  the  fundamental  justice 
of  a  regulated  competition.  It  is  simply  to  say  that 
justice  and  goodness  are  superior  to  business  success. 
It  is  high  time  that  the  historic  church  already 
crowned  with  centuries  of  beneficence ;  which,  how- 
ever slowly,  has  for  centuries  been  moulding  economic 
life  to  the  pattern  of  its  Master;  which  has  produced 
the  only  stable  material  out  of  which  socialism  can 
hope  to  build  a  new  society,  —  should  challenge  social- 
ism to  say  why  it  arrogates  to  itself  a  monopoly  of 
love  for  the  masses,  and  challenge  it  again  to  say 
whether,  instead  of  the  Christian  nation  of  kings  and 
priests,  its  social  regeneration  through  economic 
comfort  wiU  produce  anything  better  than  smug, 
selfish  respectability,  a  comfortable  but  heroless 
mediocrity. 

V 

The  church  can  aid  all  efforts  at  social  betterment 
by  producing  religiously  regenerate  lives.  A  church 
does  not,  it  is  true,  regenerate  a  man ;  but,  however 
more  exactly  it  might  be  expressed,  the  duty  of  the 
church  remains.  Its  office  is  not  that  of  a  school, 
but  of  a  home  into  which  new  sons  and  daughters 
are  continually  being  bom.  It,  and  it  alone,  of 
all  social  institutions  is  capable  of  furnishing  the 


176   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

individuals  out  of  which  a  good  society  can  be 
built. 

The  Christian  ideal  of  the  regenerated  individual 
is  social.  A  man  cannot  conform  to  the  example  of 
Jesus  unless  his  life  be  joined  consciously  to  others. 
The  spontaneity  with  which  Christians  have  always 
crystallized  into  the  social  groups  of  school  and 
state  and  church,  as  well  as  the  social  reforms  that 
have  always  accompanied  its  religious  revivals,  abun- 
dantly evidence  this  fact. 

But  the  church,  except  as  its  zeal  for  others  has 
too  often  committed  it  to  a  pauperizing  charity,  has 
never  flattered  men  into  believing  that  their  miseries 
were  simply  the  result  of  environment.  It  has  dared 
to  cut  deep  into  the  heart  of  that  lie,  and  to  teach 
that  sin  is  at  the  bottom  of  misery.  But  it  does 
something  more  —  it  defines  sin  as  the  voluntary 
withdrawal  of  a  man  from  his  filial  life  with  God 
and  his  fraternal  life  with  men.  Irrehgion,  it  holds, 
lies  behind  social  iniquities.  Then,  having  clearly 
in  mind  the  disease,  it  undertakes  the  remedy.  By 
the  interpretation  of  God  through  human  love,  it 
shows  men  the  way  to  that  religious  environment 
that  is  the  source  of  righteousness.  By  the  story  of 
its  Christ  it  inspires  men  to  sacrifice  in  social  service. 
As  sin  is  selfishness,  so  righteousness  is  fraternity. 


THE  CHURCH   AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT      1 77 

The  great  ecclesiastical  doctrine  of  regeneration  has, 
therefore,  a  social  application,  not  by  accommoda- 
tion, but  by  necessity.  Regeneration,  if  it  is  any- 
thing, is  the  change  of  a  man's  life  from  insulation 
to  social  imion.  He  is  a  son  of  God,  and  therefore 
a  brother  of  men. 

In  the  Christian  sense,  therefore,  to  produce 
regenerate  individuals  is  inevitably  to  produce  a 
regenerate  society.  Goodness,  in  the  Christian  sense, 
is  social,  not  monastic.  Yet  to  determine  the  forms 
in  which  this  social  goodness  shall  express  itself  does 
not  fall  within  the  power  of  the  church  as  an  institu- 
tion. Reforms  are  for  church  members,  not  for 
churches.  Any  economic  or  political  expedient  that 
will  best  and  most  effectively  express  Christian 
fraternity  will  be  supported  by  Christian  church 
members  if  only  their  heads  are  as  clear  as  their 
hearts  are  warm. 

And  it  is  precisely  here  that  evangelical  religion 
is  resultful  as  a  social  force.  We  may  well  thank 
Unitarianism  and  ethical  societies  for  their  insist- 
ence upon  morality  and  rational  faith.  But  with 
all  possible  respect  for  their  profound  theological 
influence,  with  notable  exceptions,  they  cannot  be 
said  to  have  exercised  wide  influence  over  the  masses. 
The  age  to-day,  as  never  before,  knows  the  right, 


178     THE  CHURCH  AND  THE   CHANGING   ORDER 

but  needs  the  power  to  do  the  right.  The  so-called 
liberal  movement,  while  justly  criticising  evangeli- 
cahsm  in  the  old,  crude,  popular  sense,  has  too  often 
confused  religion  with  ethical  culture,  and,  with 
all  its  undeniable  services  as  a  corrective  of  a  too 
often  irrational  orthodoxy,  lives  institutionally  to- 
day largely  by  the  adoption  of  dissatisfied  products 
of  evangelicalism.  Morality  has  little  power  of 
inspiration  in  comparison  with  religion.  The  gos- 
pel of  the  eternal  life  is  more  dynamic  than  abstract 
truth,  and  it  is  in  the  religious  procreativeness 
of  evangelical  churches  that  the  Christianization  of 
formative  social  influences  will  largely  rest. 

What  new  sort  of  humanity  the  future  may  have 
in  store,  one  cannot,  of  course,  foresee,  but,  with 
all  respect  for  a  current  belief  to  the  contrary,  so 
long  as  men  continue  to  resemble  the  men  of  the  past, 
it  is  certain  that  a  churchless  society  and  a  religion- 
less  morality  mean  social  and  moral  degeneration. 
If  the  social  movement  has  any  respect  for  the  results 
of  experience,  it  will  count  upon  religious  men  and 
women  as  the  central  force  of  any  reform.  And  it 
will  not  read  immortahty  out  of  court  in  order  to 
prove  that  a  man's  soul  does  not  consist  in  the  things 
that  he  possesses. 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT      1 79 

VI 

And  thus  we  arrive  at  a  conclusion  which  is  neither 
novel  nor  sensational :  the  church  need  not  be  out- 
grown, if  it  furnishes  its  age  regenerating  social 
influences  in  the  shape  of  men  and  women  whose 
hearts  are  fraternal  because  they  are  Christian  —  the 
inevitable  fruit  of  its  gospel  of  the  more  abundant 
life.  But  it  can  do  more.  These  men  and  women, 
who  serve  their  fellows  because  they  love  and  fear 
their  God,  should  not  be  sent  forth  altruistic  dilet- 
tantes and  untrained  enthusiasts.  The  church  is 
a  social  institution  —  or  better,  each  church  is  a 
little  social  group,  a  microcosm  of  society  itself. 
To  belong  to  a  church  that  is  worthy  of  the  name 
should  be  to  be  trained  in  the  art  of  social,  not  in- 
dividualistic, living.  A  genuinely  Christian  church 
member  always  is  material  ready  at  hand  for  any 
rational  social  movement ;  and  if  a  census  were  made 
of  those  who  are  effectively  connected  with  social, 
municipal,  and  national  reforms,  it  is  no  very  rash 
statement  that  the  large  majority  of  such  persons 
would  be  found  to  have  come,  either  personally 
or  through  family  example,  under  the  influence  of 
some  church.  It  should  never  be  otherwise.  While 
men  dream  and  agitate,  the  church  should  be  creat- 


l8o  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

ing  and  organizing  altruistic  and  religious  impulses, 
training  men  to  live  together  in  mutual  recognition 
of  each  other's  rights,  and  compelling  them  to  recog- 
nize social  as  well  as  individual  units.  In  a  word, 
as  exemplified  in  the  Christian  church,  religion  can 
be  made  to  breed  and  discipline  corporate  enthusi- 
asms. Can  the  social  movement  afford  to  despise 
it? 

And  the  present  duty  of  the  church  ?  If  it  would 
be  as  significant  as  its  past  and  its  Founder  make 
possible,  it  can  no  longer  preach  merely  an  individu- 
alistic salvation.  It  must  educate  the  social  sym- 
pathies of  its  children ;  it  must  teach  that  the  ques- 
tion of  right  and  wrong  must  have  its  answer  from 
the  counting-room  as  well  as  from  the  pulpit;  it 
must  train  its  members  to  trust  their  Christian  im- 
pulse to  side  with  whatever  cause  is  true  and  beau- 
tiful and  sane;  it  must  teach  that,  if  there  can  be 
no  regenerate  society  without  regenerate  men, 
neither  can  there  be  regenerate  men  without  a  re- 
generate society.  And  therefore,  for  the  sake  of 
all,  it  must  fulfil  its  central  duty  of  throwing  into 
an  irreligious  but  generous  age  a  host  of  sons  and 
daughters  filled  with  the  fraternal  enthusiasm  of 
its  Founder.  This  is  the  evangelicalism  that  our 
age  needs:   the  gospel  of  a  man's  saving  his  Life, 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   SOCIAL   MOVEMENT    l8l 

and  the  gospel  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  Let  men 
be  reborn,  not  that  they  may  by  and  by  get  selfishly 
rejoicing  into  heaven,  nor  yet  as  a  matter  of  duty 
or  penance  perform  good  deeds  on  earth ;  but  rather 
let  men  be  reborn  that,  just  because  of  their  new 
and  divinely  immortal  natures  which  draw  love 
from  God  himself,  they  may,  while  awaiting  heaven, 
constitute  a  better  social  environment  and  a  better 
humanity  here  on  earth. 

By  becoming  sons,  let  Christians  remember  that 
they  have  become  brothers. 


CHAPTER   Vn 

THE  CHURCH  AND  MATERIALISM 

"Not  that  thou  should  take  them  from  the  world, 
but  that  thou  shouldst  keep  them  from  the  evil." 
So  prayed  Jesus  in  his  last  hours  for  his  disciples. 
It  is  a  prayer  which  has  needed  answer  in  every 
age,  but  particularly  in  our  own  day  when  it  is  so 
hard  to  draw  the  line  of  demarcation  between  the 
church  and  a  civihzation  already  partially  respon- 
sive to  Christian  ideals.  The  evil  from  which  the 
church  needs  to  be  protected  is  something  far  more 
insidious  than  the  persecuting  Jew  or  the  idolatrous 
Roman;  it  is  the  materialistic  habit  of  thought 
which  not  only  in  its  more  aggressive  form  openly 
attacks  Christianity  as  a  representative  of  spiritual 
interests,  but  in  a  far  more  deadly  way  poisons  the 
atmosphere  in  which  the  church  must  live. 

I 

The  materialism  that  fights  in  the  open  is  the 
monism  of  men  like  Haeckel  with  its  two  cosmic 
laws  of  the  constancy  of  matter  and  the  constancy 
182 


THE   CHURCH   AND    MATERIALISM  1 83 

of  force.  It  would  deny  the  existence  of  those  ele- 
ments of  human  nature  and  of  the  universe  which 
make  religion  possible.  Such  a  philosophy  is  liable 
to  result  from  the  view  of  the  world  which  science 
gives.  It  is  something  more  than  a  distinct  philoso- 
phy. It  is  a  fixed  idea  which  determines  the  entire 
scope  and  process  of  a  man's  thinking.  Who  can 
hold  to  a  belief  in  the  existence  of  a  human  soul,  if 
it  be  possible  to  reduce  consciousness  to  the  reactions 
of  the  nervous  organism?  Who  can  think  of  a 
God  in  the  universe,  if  thought  be  a  function  of  the 
brain?  Morality  itself,  assailed  thus  at  its  very 
centre,  slips  away  into  a  regard  for  conventions  or 
becomes  a  form  of  social  utilitarianism. 

It  is  true  that  within  the  past  half-generation  the 
materialist,  pure  and  simple,  has  found  himself 
somewhat  discredited  both  on  the  side  of  philoso- 
phy and  on  the  side  of  science.  Our  investigations 
of  matter  have  reached  such  attenuated  units  as 
to  make  it  difficult  to  distinguish  what  we  com- 
monly know  as  substance  from  what  we  would 
call  force.  This  difficulty  has  played  into  the  hands 
of  the  idealist  until,  from  the  point  of  view  of  meta- 
physics, at  least,  there  are  more  problems  connected 
with  the  reality  of  what  we  call  matter  than  there 
are  with  the  reality  of  what  we  call  experience. 


184  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

But  this  after  all  has  not  removed  the  danger  to 
which  the  church  as  the  representative  of  religion 
is  exposed.  The  ordinary  man  finds  it  rather 
difficult  to  get  much  satisfaction  from  idealism. 
However  often  the  materialist  may  be  answered,  the 
influence  of  such  books  as  the  "Riddle  of  the  Uni- 
verse" is  difficult  to  counteract.  It  has  been  read 
by  hundreds  of  thousands  of  persons  who  are  not 
capable  of  sustained  philosophical  thought,  but  who 
are  captivated  by  the  assurance  with  which  Haeckel 
sets  forth  his  conception  of  materialistic  monism. 
And  an  attitude  of  mind  once  fixed  is  hard  to  correct. 
If  the  outcome  of  the  influence  of  such  materialism 
were  confined  to  the  realms  of  speculation  regard- 
ing ultimate  realities,  the  church  would  even  then 
be  vitally  interested  in  producing  rebutting  evidence ; 
but  there  are  far  more  important  matters  at  stake 
than  metaphysics.  When  once  the  average  man 
gets  possessed  of  the  belief  that  the  entire  imiverse 
is  soulless,  composed  of  one  substance  which,  what- 
ever force  it  may  possess,  permits  no  radical  difference 
between  physics  and  psychology,  he  finds  himself 
adrift  in  his  thinking  and  opposed  to  everything  that 
the  church  really  stands  for.  God  and  immortality 
are  to  him  the  survivals  of  primitive  superstition  and 
fear.    Convinced  that  he  and  the  beast,  while  differ- 


THE  CHURCH  AND   MATERIALISM  1 85 

ing  at  some  points,  are  alike  in  that  neither  is  in  the 
image  of  God;  convinced  further  that  there  is  no 
love  or  purpose  in  the  universe,  but  only  a  series  of 
changes  which  lead  nowhere,  —  he  is  inevitably  led 
to  cheapen  himself  and  virtue  and  rehgion.  Such 
a  man,  under  the  inertia  of  an  inherited  altruism 
or  under  the  inspiration  of  men  moved  by  other 
conceptions  of  mankind  and  the  universe,  may  live 
a  helpful  and  even  beautiful  life ;  or,  if  such  inertia 
be  lacking  as  it  is  among  thousands  of  immigrants, 
he  may  become  frankly  sensual.  But  in  any  case, 
in  the  same  proportion  as  his  doubts  move  over  into 
a  positively  negative  conviction,  will  he  become 
an  enemy  of  the  church  and  that  gospel  which  the 
church  must  preach.  One  has  only  to  observe  the 
second  generation  of  Jews  and  Bohemians  to  realize 
what  this  means  in  the  case  of  the  masses. 

Yet,  although  philosophical  materialism  is  alarm- 
ingly prevalent,  the  church  seems  to  have  overlooked 
its  importance.  There  are  hundreds  of  societies 
carrying  on  a  vigorous  campaign  of  atheism,  societies 
with  their  catechisms  and  their  Sunday-schools. 
But  the  great  publication  houses  of  the  various  de- 
nominations are  publishing  little  or  nothing  to  coun- 
teract their  influence.  The  "Age  of  Reason," 
"The  Mistakes  of  Moses,"  and  the  "Riddle  of  the 


1 86     THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   CHANGING   ORDER 

Universe"  cannot  be  counteracted  by  eight-page 
tracts  about  pious  soldiers  or  the  danger  of  using 
tobacco.  One  of  the  greatest  services  such  societies 
could  render  the  community  would  be  the  publica- 
tion of  very  cheap  editions  of  really  masterly  books 
capable  of  counteracting  this  materiaUstic  drift 
and  propaganda  among  the  masses.  It  is  pathetic 
to  see  good  men  regarding  such  books  as  those  of 
Henry  Drummond  as  injurious  to  Christian  faith. 
There  are,  of  course,  many  earnest  Christians  who 
never  heard  of  Haeckel  or  of  materialistic  monism. 
To  them  the  entire  matter  is  a  bogeyman  raised  by 
scholars.  But  even  they  feel  the  influence  of  the  at- 
mosphere which  materialism  is  creating,  just  as  a 
crowd  that  knows  nothing  of  carbon  dioxide  be- 
comes sleepy  in  an  ill-ventilated  room.  Good  sense 
would  argue  that  the  [church  should  undertake 
to  protect  its  members  from  an  unappreciated 
danger. 

n 

For  materialism  is  something  more  than  a  view  of 
the  world.  Closely  allied  to  this  deadly  philosophi- 
cal movement  is  that  materialism  which  accompanies 
the  pursuit  of  wealth. 

Commercialism  is  something  more  than  the  matter 


THE   CHURCH  AND   MATERIALISM  1 87 

of  the  counting-house  or  the  stock  exchange.  It,  too, 
is  an  attitude  of  mind  which  controls  us  in  far  other 
activities  than  those  of  business. 

We  may  admit  that  some  of  the  criticisms  of  the 
commercial  spirit  are  extreme.  Economic  life  is 
as  legitimate  as  spiritual  life.  More  than  that, 
down  in  the  heart  of  commercialism  there  is  a  strain 
of  idealism  which  makes  the  great  merchant  or  finan- 
cier akin  with  creative  spirits  of  other  spheres  of 
life.  Ages  of  great  commercial  activity  have  always 
been  themselves  or  have  prepared  the  way  for  eras 
of  the  highest  culture.  Poor  nations  have  produced 
little  art  and  less  philosophy.  The  wealth  of  Athens 
made  possible  the  glories  of  the  Acropolis,  just  as 
the  wealth  of  Florence  and  papal  Rome  and  Venice 
made  possible  the  art  of  Michael  Angelo  and  Ra- 
phael and  Titian. 

But  when  all  this  and  much  more  is  said  by  way 
of  forestalling  an  exaggerated  denunciation  of  com- 
merciahsm,  we  must  still  confess  that  Jesus  never 
said  a  truer  thing  than,  "Ye  cannot  serve  God  and 
Mammon." 

In  a  competitive  system  a  business  man,  by  the 
very  force  of  circumstances,  is  a  warrior.  He  may  be 
an  industrial  Bayard  without  fear  and  without  re- 
proach, but  he  is  none  the  less  a  warrior,  and  war 


1 88     THE   CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

in  the  very  nature  of  the  case  is  an  enemy  of  love  and 
a  thoroughly  Christian  society. 

There  is,  moreover,  constant  danger  that  the 
heroism  of  war  may  be  lost  in  the  unscrupulousness 
of  business.  A  competitive  world  with  all  its  faults 
certainly  tends  to  produce  strong  characters,  but 
it  also  lamentably  succeeds  in  developing  men  whose 
ambitions  do  not  rise  above  the  standards  of  mere 
wealth.  Commercial  success  carries  with  it  too 
often  an  arrogance  and  an  animalism  of  which  our 
daily  papers  are  only  too  well  informed.  But  the 
animalism  of  the  idle  rich  is  far  less  dangerous  to 
the  community  than  the  breakdown  in  moral  stand- 
ards which  too  often  accompanies  and  causes  com- 
mercial success.  We  have  only  too  often  seen  how 
different  is  the  code  of  morals  which  a  man  pre- 
scribes for  himself  as  an  individual  and  for  himself 
as  a  director  of  a  corporation.  Individually,  he  may 
be  a  dehghtful  companion,  a  generous  citizen,  a 
good  father,  and  a  self-sacrificing  neighbor,  inter- 
ested in  religion  and  in  culture.  As  a  member  of 
a  corporation,  he  may  be  guilty  of  bribing  legislators, 
of  diverting  funds  to  illegal  uses,  of  manipulating 
accounts,  and  of  heartless  methods  in  the  achieve- 
ment of  his  ends. 

He  would  be  a  most  unfair  critic,  however,  who 


THE   CHURCH  AND   MATERIALISM  1 89 

would  see  in  these  men  sinners  above  all  other  men 
who  dwell  in  our  modem  Jerusalem.  As  Jesus  said 
so  long  ago,  except  we  all  repent  we  shall  all  like- 
wise perish.  For  they  have  been  the  victims  quite 
as  much  as  the  creators  of  false  standards  of  mo- 
rality. "A  man  cannot  serve  two  masters,"  said 
Jesus,  and  the  saying  is  as  true  in  the  twentieth 
century  as  it  was  in  the  first.  But  the  deteriora- 
tion of  a  human  soul  is  too  subtle  a  process  for  the 
soul  itself  to  appreciate.  Few  men  would  dehber- 
ately  say  that  wealth  was  a  supreme  good.  They 
would  say  they  seek  the  power,  the  enjoyments,  that 
wealth  makes  possible.  And  yet  the  entire  world 
is  in  danger  of  yielding  to  a  despair  as  to  the  finality 
of  spiritual  standards.  Public  opinion  has  become 
surcharged  with  the  belief  that  success  is  in  itself  an 
answer  to  all  criticisms  as  to  the  methods  by  which 
it  has  been  attained. 

The  dangers  which  assail  the  church  in  such  an 
attitude  of  mind  are  too  obvious  to  demand  detailed 
description.    There  are,  however,  two  which  are  par-  >, 
ticularly  fatal  to  the  spiritual  purposes  of  the  gospel. 

The  first  danger  is  that  the  preacher  shall  be  con- 
trolled by  men  whose  ideals  are  materialized  by  the 
standards  of  an  unethical  commercialism,  and  who 
would  lose  money  by  a  genuine  Christianization  of 


190   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

law.  This  control  is  sometimes  explicit,  and  the 
preacher  is  bidden  to  keep  silence  on  the  larger 
questions  of  business  morality  and  to  confine  himself 
to  the  sort  of  sins  of  which  church  attendants  are 
seldom  guilty.  There  is,  for  example,  little  opposi- 
tion to  the  pastors  denouncing  saloons  or  red  light 
districts  except  in  those  rare  instances  in  which  the 
property  devoted  to  immoral  uses  is  in  the  possession 
of  a  member  of  his  congregation.  There  is,  how- 
ever, frequent  objection  to  outspoken  frankness 
concerning  the  rights  of  laboring  men  and  of  those 
who  are  being  crushed  in  the  war  of  competition. 
Such  opposition  does  not  always  result  in  the  forced 
resignation  of  a  preacher  or  a  teacher,  but  even  such 
instances  of  the  silencing  of  a  social  message  are  not 
unknown.  It  is  not  so  many  years  ago  when,  if 
report  is  to  be  believed,  one  of  the  most  prominent 
New  Testament  scholars  of  the  day  was  forced  out 
from  his  position  in  a  theological  seminary  in  the 
East  because  of  his  criticism  of  the  methods  adopted 
by  a  corporation  represented  by  a  man  who  was 
ready  to  make  a  large  gift  to  the  institution,  provided 
the  professor  no  longer  taught  within  it.  And  there 
has  been  more  than  one  pastor  who  has  aroused  such 
opposition  on  the  part  of  certain  members  of  his 
parish  as  to  compel  his  resignation  or  his  silence. 


THE   CHURCH  AND    MATERIALISM  19I 

A  more  subtle  and  widespread  danger  than  this, 
however,  is  the  time-serving  spirit  which  creeps  in 
upon  the  church  because  of  its  relation  with  men 
of  wealth.  In  too  many  cases  a  church  will  have 
among  its  attendants  men  whose  business  ethics 
are  notoriously  bad.  The  minister  who  preaches 
to  a  congregation  thus  leavened  with  corruption 
does  not  need  to  be  a  conscious  sycophant  or  time 
server  to  find  himself,  both  in  the  interests  of  his 
church  and  of  himself,  avoiding  topics  which  would 
tend  to  alienate  such  persons.  For  the  minister  in 
such  a  position,  we  can  have  only  the  deepest  pity. 
It  is  easy  to  say  that  he  should  speak  out  bravely, 
not  regarding  the  face  of  man.  But  a  study  of  most 
situations  of  the  sort  will  show  that  for  him  so  to 
speak  out  would  mean  not  only  the  end  of  his  use- 
fulness, but  also  a  crippling  of  the  power  of  his 
church.  It  is  little  wonder  that  in  such  a  condition 
he  attempts  to  quiet  his  own  conscience  by  a  deter- 
mination to  accomplish  his  ends  by  indirect  methods. 

But  the  world  will  not  be  saved  by  tact. 

The  rank  and  file  of  ministers  are  in  sympathy 
with  a  nobler  social  ethics  and  with  every  good  cause. 
It  would  be  slander  to  believe  otherwise.  Show 
them  what  to  do  in  a  moral  crisis,  and  they  will  try 
to  do  it.     But  too  much  is  expected  of  their  unaided 


192      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE   CHANGING   ORDER 

efforts.  Church  members  must  come  to  their  sup- 
port. The  minister  can  accomplish  little,  except 
as  his  teaching  is  reenforced  and  disseminated  by 
the  lives  of  his  laymen.  There  must  be  heroism  in 
the  pew  as  well  as  in  the  pulpit.  The  church  that 
stands  in  terror  of  wealth  will  not-  be  loyal  to  its 
God.  It  must  often  choose  between  God  and  large 
contributions.  Until  its  membership  is  ready  to 
say  that,  in  case  the  faithful  preaching  of  the  gospel 
of  brotherhood  results  in  the  alienation  of  large  con- 
tributors, it  will  practise  self-sacrifice  to  make  up 
a  resulting  deficit,  a  church  cannot  expect  large 
spiritual  influence.  It  has  refused  to  take  up  its 
cross  and  to  follow  its  Christ  to  Calvary. 

It  is,  of  course,  easy  here  to  exaggerate.  A  rather 
wide  knowledge  of  the  situation  in  churches  leads 
me  to  the  conviction  that  the  type  of  business  man 
who  is  really  influential  in  the  affairs  of  the  church  is 
much  more  ready  to  hear  a  rational  presentation  of 
the  social  significance  of  the  gospel  than  the  enemies 
of  the  church  charge.  "Bourgeois"  he  maybe,  but 
he  is  not  an  ecclesiastical  tyrant.  It  is  true,  he  does 
not  want  his  minister  to  give  him  advice  as  to  the 
management  of  his  business.  He  looks  to  his 
pastor  not  for  counsel  on  strikes  and  credits,  prices 
and    combinations,    but    for    moral    inspiration, 


THE   CHURCH  AND   MATERIALISM  1 93 

help  in  the  maintenance  of  his  own  spiritual  life, 
and  great  truths  that  shall  direct  his  conscience. 
And  a  minister  of  ordinary  common  sense  can  be 
of  profound  assistance  to  the  world  of  business 
precisely  at  this  point.  He  should  remember  that 
his  position  is  not  that  of  the  actor  who  would  win 
applause,  but  that  of  the  physician  who  would  cure 
souls.  He  is  not  a  social  reformer  with  programmes. 
He  deals  with  materialism,  not  business.  And  if 
in  himself  there  is  the  flame  of  spirituality,  he  will 
be  able  to  see  and  combat  the  materialism  of  wealth 
in  its  very  citadel  —  the  soul  of  the  man  of  business. 
Yet  it  is  at  this  point  that  the  second  and  more 
insidious  effect  of  materiaUsm  is  liable  to  appear. 
A  materialistic  commerciahsm  affects  many  a  man 
whose  real  interests  are  in  the  realm  of  the  spirit. 
The  scientist  grows  commercial  when,  instead  of 
setting  his  heart  upon  new  discoveries,  he  makes  the 
results  of  his  investigations  the  means  of  accumu- 
lating wealth.  At  the  door  of  every  laboratory  is 
the  promoter  with  the  promise  of  fortunes  for  the 
man  who  can  wed  science  to  industry.  At  the  door 
of  the  study  of  every  author  is  the  publisher  with 
his  promise  of  royalties.  Few  of  us,  laymen  or 
ministers,  can  withstand  the  temptation  to  leave  the 
service  of  the  gospel  for  the  service  of  tables. 


194      THE   CHURCH  AND  THE   CHANGING   ORDER 

I  am  not  referring  now  to  the  grotesque  temp- 
tation set  before  ministers  to  act  as  agents  for  mining 
companies,  rubber  companies,  and  all  sorts  of  ques- 
tionable business  enterprises.  The  temptation  is 
much  more  subtle  than  that.  It  is  rather  to  bring 
material  tests  into  the  realm  of  spiritual  activities; 
to  worship  statistics  rather  than  spiritual  influence; 
to  judge  a  church  successful  when  it  can  point  to 
large  congregations  and  large  additions  to  its  roll 
of  members.  Far  be  it  from  me  to  minimize  the 
importance  of  such  results.  But  still  farther  be  it 
from  any  one  to  judge  that  the  work  of  the  church 
is  completed  if  this  be  all  it  can  show.  Fanaticism 
can  point  to  its  hordes  of  converts.  Crowds  are  no 
proof  of  a  prophetic  message.  The  gospel  must 
point  not  only  to  numbers  but  to  new  souls  and  to 
a  new  social  mind  and  conscience.  It  would  very 
possibly  be  the  best  thing  that  could  happen  to  some 
churches  if  their  enormous  roll  of  membership 
could  be  so  thoroughly  sifted  that  there  would  be 
left  only  those  men  and  women  who  can  be  counted 
upon  for  service  and  for  the  support  of  the  real 
mission  of  the  church. 

A  church  is  something  more  than  a  body  of  per- 
sons gathered  together  to  sustain  cooperatively 
a  private  chaplain.     Such  a  church  would  make 


THE  CHURCH   AND   MATERIALISM  1 95 

religion  one  of  the  luxuries  which  wealth  can  afford, 
and  make  the  materialism  of  creature  comfort 
appear  as  an  angel  of  light.  That  church  alone  is 
fulfilling  its  real  function  which  flees  every  tempta- 
tion to  judge  its  efficiency  by  any  material  standard ; 
which  gives  its  pastor  freedom  to  preach  a  prophetic 
message ;  which  will  itself  seek  not  only  to  increase 
its  membership  roll,  but  will  also  stand  self-sacri- 
ficingly  for  those  principles  which  led  Jesus  him- 
self to  Calvary.  There  have  been  more  churches 
ruined  by  being  "run  on  business  principles"  than 
by  excessive  spiritual  zeal. 

Over  against  this  temptation  to  yield  to  material- 
istic standards,  the  church  must  emphasize  its  mis- 
sion as  the  one  institution  that  insists  that  material 
goods  shall  be  used  for  spiritual  ends.  By  this  I  do 
not  mean  that  the  church  should  follow  the  example 
of  earlier  centuries  and  insist  that  the  chief  good  to 
which  wealth  can  be  placed  is  the  endowment  of 
religious  establishments.  Some  such  establishments 
are  demanded,  but,  as  many  a  region  of  Europe 
can  testify,  such  a  method  of  devoting  wealth  to 
spiritual  ends,  if  too  exclusive,  becomes  a  social  in- 
jury. To  devote  wealth  to  spiritual  ends  means 
something  vastly  more  difficult  and  more  needed. 
It  means  that,  to  use  Jesus'  own  words,  we  are  to 


196   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

"make  friends  through  the  Mammon  of  unright- 
eousness." In  other  words,  the  church  must  teach 
the  world  that  weahh  is  a  servant  and  not  a  master; 
that  it  is  not  an  end  in  itself  but  a  means  to  the  de- 
velopment of  brotherliness. 

I  am  aware  that  such  a  statement  sounds  hopelessly 
general  and  trite;  but  it  is  none  the  less  a  funda- 
mental truth.  And,  paradoxical  as  it  sounds,  the 
most  powerful  message  is  that  of  truism.  Revo- 
lutions, themselves,  are  the  children  of  socialized 
generahties.  The  man  who  believes  with  all  his 
soul  that  the  Ufe  is  more  than  the  body,  and  that  a 
man  is  something  more  than  an  economic  agent, 
who  believes  in  the  dominance  of  the  spiritual  rather 
than  the  material,  will  be  the  man  most  ready  to 
apply  the  spirit  of  brotherliness  to  his  economic 
life.  To  be  religious  in  the  Christian  sense  is  some- 
thing more  than  to  assent  to  theological  definitions. 
It  is  an  imperial  trust  in  God's  love  and  an  impelling 
conviction  of  the  eternal  worth  of  man.  And  just 
because  a  man  is  thus  at  one  with  Jesus  in  spiritual 
idealism  will  he  be  also  one  with  Jesus  in  caring 
for  humanity's  other  needs.  He  will  see  that  the 
sick  are  healed,  that  the  poor  are  evangelized,  that 
the  hungry  are  fed ;  and,  as  Jesus  could  not,  he  will 
also  see  that  society  itself  comes  under  the  control 


THE   CHURCH  AND   MATERIALISM  1 97 

of  spiritual  idealism.  He  will  vehemently  oppose 
all  that  hideous  materialism  that  makes  life  cheaper 
than  dividends ;  that  fails  to  protect  workmen  from 
deadly  machinery;  that  wrings  the  life  out  of  little 
children  in  huge  factories ;  that  ruthlessly  turns  the 
ambition  of  competitors  into  despair;  that  builds 
up  business  success  at  the  expense  of  justice  and  of 
love. 

To  bring  spiritual  idealism  into  the  production 
of  wealth  is  just  as  imperative  as  to  bring  it  into  the 
distribution  of  wealth.  In  a  far  diflferent  sense  from 
that  which  the  apostle  said,  charity  does  cover  a 
multitude  of  sins.  The  devotion  of  ill-gotten  wealth 
to  spiritual  ends  is  undoubtedly  a  just  social  restitu- 
tion, but,  so  far  as  the  man  himself  is  concerned,  it 
is  the  rankest  hypocrisy  if  it  be  not  accompanied 
by  an  abandonment  of  illegitimate  methods  of  pro- 
ducing wealth.  It  is  one  thing  for  a  repentant  thief 
to  contribute  his  plunder  to  human  well-being,  and 
it  is  quite  another  thing  for  a  thief  to  steal  in  order 
that  he  may  be  charitable. 

I  know  only  too  well  the  reply  which  will  be  made 
to  these  statements  —  that  the  individual  is  powerless 
to  further  the  spiritual  ends  in  an  environment 
that  is  tyrannically  materialistic.  But  it  is  precisely 
to  such  men  that  the  call  of  Jesus  mu^t  be  brought 


198      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  CHANGING   ORDER 

by  the  church.  Calvary  may  mean  to  them  the 
bankruptcy  court.  The  cross  may  mean  to  them 
penury  and  the  contempt  of  former  business  asso- 
ciates; the  call  of  the  church  to  spiritual  life  may 
mean  the  championship  of  unpopular  legislative 
reform  and  the  following  of  profit-reducing  ideals  of 
business  ethics.  It  may  mean  cooperation  with  the 
certainty  of  financial  loss  in  the  government's  in- 
vestigation of  business  abuses.  It  will  certainly 
mean  the  adoption  of  conscientious  methods  in 
competition  and  a  loathing  of  bribe-giving,  whether 
it  be  open  or  disguised  as  advertising  or  retaining 
fees. 

Nor  is  this  call  of  the  church  to  the  rich  alone. 
MateriaHsm  is  not  to  be  guaged  by  income.  It 
contaminates  the  wage-earner  as  truly  as  it  contami- 
nates the  millionnaire.  For  the  labor  movement  and 
socialism  are  unavoidably  compelled  to  bring  to  the 
front  the  question  of  wages  and  to  emphasize  the 
struggle  for  the  material  goods  of  life.  As  we  have 
elsewhere  insisted,  they  have  other  ideals,  but  the 
point  of  their  attack  must  always  be  material.  It  is 
a  misfortune  that  this  is  the  case,  but  it  is  one  forced 
upon  labor  by  its  situation.  The  wealthy  class 
is  ready  to  assist  the  poor  collectively  with  libra- 
ries, imiversity  settlements,  schools,  and  occasionally 


THE  CHURCH  AND   MATERIALISM  1 99 

churches.  All  these  benefactions,  however,  are  made 
without  in  the  least  affecting  the  existing  economic 
struggle.    They  may  even  give  bitterness  to  it. 

The  church  should  assist  within  all  legitimate 
limits  labor's  struggle  for  the  good  things  of  life,  but 
it  should  reenforce  the  better  type  of  labor  leaders 
in  combating  that  tendency  to  gross  living  and  sor- 
did estimates  of  life  which  so  threaten  the  masses. 
If  it  does  nothing  else,  it  should  help  the  poor  man 
to  see  that  in  his  envy  of  another  man's  wealth  and 
in  his  own  struggle  to  keep  body  and  soul  together, 
he  is  threatened  with  the  same  dangers  that  he  sees 
in  a  larger  scale  in  the  lives  of  the  men  whom  he  as- 
sails. It  is  a  difficult,  one  is  tempted  to  say  at  times, 
an  impossible  task.  And,  indeed,  it  will  be  impos- 
sible for  a  church  that,  at  the  moment  in  which  it 
brings  the  gospel  of  the  worth  of  man  to  the  laboring 
class,  does  not  also  bring  the  same  gospel  with  its  im- 
perative call  for  justice  to  the  capitalist.  The  one 
class,  as  the  other  it  must  teach  that  a  man's  life  does 
not  consist  in  the  abundance  of  things  he  possesses, 
but  it  must  also  teach  the  rich  that  the  gospel  of 
brotherhood  means  sacrifice  rather  than  selfish 
content. 

That  is  the  message  of  the  Cross  to  the  lords  of  a 
commercial  age. 


200      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  CHANGING   ORDER 
III 

The  desire  for  a  personal  income  is  even  more 
potent  in  materializing  the  present  social  transition 
than  the  desire  to  make  one's  fortune.  For  the  ris- 
ing standard  of  living  which  incites  the  search  for 
increased  income  on  the  part  of  a  family  group  is 
reacting  upon  the  family. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  call  attention  to  the  sig- 
nificance of  this  income  problem  upon  marriage 
and  the  birth  rate,  although  the  matter  is  of  impor- 
tance in  the  realms  of  morals  as  truly  as  in  the  realm 
of  politics.  Parenthood  is  a  moral  responsibihty 
that  increases  in  proportion  as  one  judges  a  human 
soul  to  be  as  valuable  as  the  gospel  of  the  risen 
Christ  would  argue.  A  man  may  well  stop  to 
consider  his  financial  ability  to  maintain  wife  and 
children  before  establishing  a  home,  but  it  is  just  as 
essential  that  he  should  stop  to  consider  whether  he 
is  capable  of  maintaining  such  a  home  as  shall  guar- 
antee the  proper  training  for  those  immortal  souls 
it  will  call  into  individual  existence. 

Apart  from  this  much  debated  subject,  however, 
the  church  cannot  ignore  the  industrialization  and 
the  new  economic  independence  of  women.  Back 
of  this  process  which  has  become  so  pronounced  in 


THE   CHURCH  AND   MATERIALISM  201 

the  present  generation  there  lies  this  matter  of  in- 
come earning.  The  thousands  and  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  women  who  are  now  competing  with 
men  in  practically  every  branch  of  our  economic 
life  are  not  seeking  to  grow  rich ;  many  of  them  are 
not  seeking  even  the  means  of  bare  support.  A  large 
proportion  of  them  are  supplementing  the  income 
of  the  head  of  the  family  or  are  seeking  an  indepen- 
dence not  otherwise  possible  for  them. 

This  breaking  down  of  the  industrial  difference 
between  the  sexes  brings  a  distinctly  new  duty  upon 
the  church.  It  is  another  evidence  of  the  truth 
which  cannot  be  too  often  repeated  to  the  effect 
that  the  church  must  deal  with  men  and  women  as 
it  finds  them  in  a  given  period,  rather  than  as  its 
inherited  theologies  and  philosophies  found  them. 
Compare  the  state  of  society  in  which  Paul  could 
bid  a  wife  as  the  weaker  vessel  be  subject  to  her 
husband,  and  in  which  he  insisted  that  women  should 
wear  veils  and  keep  silent  in  religious  meetings, 
with  that  of  to-day  with  its  rapid  approach  to  indus- 
trial, social,  and  political  equality  of  the  sexes,  with 
its  armies  of  women  working  side  by  side  with  the 
armies  of  men,  and  with  the  prominence  of  women 
in  church  and  reform  movements ! 

But  just  because  economic  life  is  growing  sexless 


202   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

and  the  husband  no  longer  has  an  ownership  right 
in  his  wife,  must  the  church  insist  upon  an  ideahsm 
which  would  prevent  this  aspect  of  industrialism 
lowering  all  the  relations  of  life.  One  of  the  very 
real  dangers  which  arise  from  this  aspect  of  the  new 
order  is  that  industrial  comradeship  between  men 
and  women  shall  tend  more  to  the  lowering  of  women 
than  to  the  elevation  of  men.  The  church  does  not 
seek  to  reinstate  the  Graeco-Roman  conception  of 
the  family;  on  the  contrary,  it  knows  that  in  Christ 
there  is  an  equality  that  knows  no  male  and  female. 
But  it  does  need  to  insist  upon  the  Christian  concep- 
tion of  the  sanctity  of  the  home  and  upon  that  health- 
ily romantic  idealism  which  makes  marriage  some- 
thing more  than  a  business  partnership,  and  woman 
something  else  than  plaything  or  industrial  rival. 

Literature,  unfortunately,  is  here  an  ally  of  in- 
dustrialism. Your  modem  novelist  knows  too 
much  about  physiology  and  primitive  man  and  the 
equality  of  the  sexes  to  be  romantic.  To  him,  — 
or  quite  as  truly  to  her,  —  the  devotion  of  the  knight 
to  his  lady  is  as  unintelligible  as  the  laws  of  heraldry. 
In  too  much  of  our  modem  literature  men  and  women 
no  longer  fall  in  love  with  each  other.  They  mate. 
For  such  literature  the  home  in  the  Christian  sense 
is  only  an  incidental  matter. 


THE   CHURCH  AND    MATERIALISM  203 

Here  is  a  new  responsibility  for  the  church  if 
it  would  Christianize  the  formative  forces  of  the 
changing  order.  This  increasingly  industrial  con- 
ception of  woman  bodes  evil  to  society.  And  it  is 
this  that  the  church  even  more  than  the  woman's 
club  must  seek  to  offset.  The  membership  of  our 
churches  is  preponderatingly  feminine.  This  con- 
dition is  likely  to  continue  because  of  a  great  variety 
of  reasons,  chief  among  which  is  the  universal  fact 
that  women  are  more  susceptible  to  idealistic  ap- 
peal than  men.  For  this  reason,  if  for  no  other,  the 
church  must  be  in  a  position  to  inspire  women  to 
work  for  women.  It  cannot  say  that  women  shall 
abandon  the  economic  world ;  it  must  see  to  it  that 
they  do  not  abandon  idealism.  The  business  woman 
is  in  danger  of  losing  her  sense  of  spiritual  values 
as  truly  as  is  the  business  man ;  possibly  even  more 
so,  for  she  is  in  danger  of  losing  her  very  womanli- 
ness. The  church  must  cease  preaching  to  an  in- 
dustrial world  as  if  it  were  composed  exclusively 
of  men.  The  new  industrial  democracy  which  is 
in  the  making  even  more  than  we  now  appreciate, 
will  be  a  democracy  of  the  sexes.  But  the  church 
cannot  be  content  with  the  economic  equality  prom- 
ised woman  by  socialism.  To  meet  the  Christian 
ideal,  women  who  are  income-earners  must  be  saved 


204   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

from  the  materialism  of  commercialism  that  they  may 
continue  to  leaven  a  commercial  age  with  non-eco- 
nomic interests ;  that  homes  may  be  established  that 
may  become  permanent  centres  of  idealistic  and  re- 
ligious influence;  that  sex  may  not  be  cheapened, 
and  that  society  may  not  be  hopelessly  devoted  to 
wealth.  What  sort  of  society  would  that  be  with 
childless  homes  and  business-centred  male  and  fe- 
male bachelors  at  the  top,  and  prolific  immigrants 
at  the  bottom  ?  Is  the  home  like  the  ministry  to  be 
judged  unneeded  in  supposedly  advanced  social 
order  ? 

Another  result  of  the  influence  of  this  general 
materialistic  trend  upon  the  family  is  to  be  seen  in 
the  increase  in  divorce.  But  it  would  be  bad  diag- 
nosis not  to  see  that  this  evil  is  but  a  symptom  of 
the  weakening  of  the  Christian  conception  of  the 
family  and  the  rise  of  the  conception  of  woman  as 
an  independent  income-earner.  Legislation  to  regu- 
late divorce  is,  of  course,  very  desirable,  but  reform 
must  go  deeper  than  law  can  sound.  It  must  reach 
the  consciences  and  reasons  of  the  individual  man 
and  woman.  It  must  forestall  the  dissolution  of 
marriage  ties  by  insisting  upon  the  sanctity  of  be- 
trothal as  well  as  of  marriage.  Married  hfe  in  too 
many  cases  is  entered  as  thoughtlessly  and  for  about 


THE  CHURCH  AND   MATERIALISM  20$ 

the  same  reasons  as  one  would  attend  a  picnic.  The 
constant  spectacle  of  divorces  belittles  marriage  and 
cheapens  love.  For  such  a  state  of  affairs  there 
is  no  fixed  remedy  but  a  rehabilitation  of  Christian 
social  ideaUsm.  Least  of  all  is  there  a  call  for  that 
most  naive  of  remedies  —  a  trial  marriage. 

It  is  a  fair  question  whether  the  church  should 
usurp  legislative  functions  in  the  matter  of  legal 
separation,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  should 
refuse  its  sanction  to  the  remarriage  of  divorced 
people.  It  ought  not  to  lend  the  sanctity  of  Jesus 
to  a  marriage  which  he  declares  to  be  adulterous. 
If  divorced  persons  wish  to  remarry,  let  them  go  to 
the  representative  of  that  law  that  broke  an  alliance 
which  the  church  had  declared  should  be  holy.  To 
say  the  least,  such  a  course  has  the  merit  of  consist- 
ency. 

But  the  church  can  take  this  position  of  self- 
respect  and  of  loyalty  to  the  teaching  of  Jesus;  it 
can  thus  attempt  to  dignify  the  home"  and  ennoble 
the  position  of  woman,  without  committing  itself 
to  the  hard  and  fast  rule  that  there  should  never  be 
a  divorce.  That  is  a  matter  of  the  Christianized 
good  sense  of  the  community.  The  church  is  not 
concerned  with  legislation.  It  should  not  urge  any 
position  which,  in  our  social  life  as  it  is  now  organ- 


2o6   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

ized,  will  cause  unnecessary  suffering.  The  Chris- 
tian ideal  of  the  impossibility  of  divorce  presupposes 
really  Christian  people  who  can  live  together,  for- 
giving one  another's  wrong-doings,  and  extenuat- 
ing one  another's  faults.  If  men  and  women  were 
thoroughly  Christian  in  the  sense  that  they  were  em- 
bodying principles  of  the  gospel,  divorces  would  be 
rare  indeed. 

But  society  is  not  Christian  in  this  real  sense. 
The  church  must  devote  itself  to  this  extension  of 
Christian  ideals  of  the  family  among  very  ordinary 
men  and  women.  At  present,  it  very  likely  must 
content  itself  with  aiming  to  produce  motives 
which  will  themselves  realize  the  ideal  of  Jesus. 
Without  insisting  upon  fantastic  romanticism  in 
the  relation  of  the  sexes,  it  should  inculcate  a  spirit 
of  genuine  love  within  the  family;  and  in  loyalty 
to  those  women  who  helped  support  its  founder, 
who  were  the  last  at  the  cross  and  the  first  at  the 
tomb,  it  must  devote  its  creative  idealism  to  the 
maintenance  and  elevation  of  that  chivalry  toward 
women  which  has  been  one  of  the  fairest  products 
of  its  honoring  of  Mary.  Society  under  the  grip  of 
materialistic  concepts  of  the  home  and  of  woman, 
be  it  never  so  full  of  industrial  comradeship  between 
the  sexes,  will  be  a  sorry  representative  of  that  king- 


THE  CHURCH  AND   MATERIALISM  207 

dom  of  God  to  which  the  church  looks  forward. 
An  industrial  order  in  which  the  mother  would 
normally  become  an  income-maker  would  be  even 
worse  than  that  in  which  she  must  become  such 
through  misfortune.  Despite  the  zeal  of  women 
novelists  and  sociologists  to  uncover  and  annul  the 
mystery  of  sex,  the  highest  estimation  in  Which 
women  will  ever  be  held  will  be  that  which  the  church 
in  loyalty  to  Jesus  must  champion.  Industrialism 
can  bring  women  equality  with  men  only  in  those 
relations  in  which  men  are  most  tempted  to  be  least 
Christian.  Whatever  women  themselves  may  think, 
the  most  of  us  men  do  not  want  women  made  our 
equals.    We  would  rather  try  to  be  theirs. 

IV 

A  man  who  has  been  travelling  all  day  in  an  alkali 
desert  finds  water  almost  incapable  of  satisfying 
his  thirst.  He  wants  something  to  "cut  the  alkali," 
and  so  turns  to  whiskey.  In  something  the  same 
way,  the  world  that  is  in  breathless  pursuit  of  wealth 
finds  it  hard  to  get  entertainment  from  anything 
that  appeals  strongly  to  the  higher  nature.  The 
materiaUsm  to  which  our  industrial  life  inevitably 
exposes  men  finds  another  expression  in  the  demand 
for  amusements  that  are  themselves  materialistic. 


2o8   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

This  demand  may  be  in  part  wholesome.  So, 
at  least,  must  we  regard  the  growing  interest  in 
physical  sports.  The  business  man  finds  healthful 
enjoyment  in  golf,  the  factory  worker  in  his  game 
of  ball  on  the  vacant  lot.  But  in  sport,  as  in  so  many 
other  things,  the  champion  of  things  spiritual  can  see 
only  too  plainly  the  operation  of  forces  which  tend 
to  destroy  health,  both  of  body  and  mind.  The 
curse  of  professionalism  is  not  that  men  are  paid 
for  playing,  but  that  it  engenders  in  an  entire  com- 
munity an  interest  in  unsound  standards  for  recrea- 
tion. Sports  which  in  themselves  are  thoroughly 
honorable  and  enjoyable  have  become  the  agents 
of  gamblers.  An  entire  public  is  interested  in  foot- 
ball or  baseball  not  because  it  understands  the  game, 
but  because  it  wants  to  see  the  championship  won. 
Colleges  and  universities  by  surreptitiously  offering 
them  assistance  while  technically  leaving  them 
amateurs,  corrupt  the  morals  of  young  men  and 
teach  them  how  to  join  the  army  of  respectable 
lawbreakers. 

All  this  may  seem  a  far  cry  from  the  sphere  of  the 
church.  In  its  details  it  undoubtedly  is.  But  the 
church  must  combat  with  all  its  vigor  the  spirit 
which  expresses  itseK  in  this  practice.  It  is  the 
lawlessness  of  commercialism.    If  university  faculties 


THE   CHURCH   AND   MATERIALISM  209 

and  alumni  were  possessed  of  the  fine  spirit  of  comity 
and  honor  for  which  gentlemen  ought  to  stand, 
we  should  hear  less  of  the  unseemly  wrangles  of 
athletic  boards  over  the  amateur  status  of  opposing . 
teams.  If  the  ideals  of  the  supremacy  of  the  spir- 
itual were  everywhere  operative,  we  should  have  no 
fewer  games,  but  we  should  not  see  athletics  prosti- 
tuted to  unworthy  ends.  The  Christian  man,  if 
he  sees  fit,  can  carry  his  Christianity  into  his  sports 
as  truly  as  into  the  prayer-meeting. 

But  athletics,  after  all,  though  possibly  the  most 
virile,  is  only  one  of  a  great  number  of  means  by 
which  the  strenuous  life  of  to-day  seeks  relaxation. 
There  is,  above  all  else,  the  stimulation  of  animal- 
ism in  the  theatre. 

Unless  a  man  be  ultra-puritanical,  he  recognizes 
the  value  of  the  theatre,  if  properly  maintained,  as 
a  source  of  legitimate  entertainment.  There  are  few 
men  among  the  clergy  who  would  approve  of  the 
action  of  the  ministers  of  a  Southern  city  in  declar- 
ing that  plays  like  "Romeo  and  Juliet"  are  immoral; 
but  any  one  in  the  least  acquainted  with  things 
theatrical  knows  that  the  playhouse  too  often  pan- 
ders to  sensuality.  We  are  under  the  ministration 
of  a  commercialized  stage ;  we  are  becoming  callous 
to  sights  and  words  which  would  have  shocked  our 


2IO   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

fathers.  The  materialism  of  the  theatre  does,  in- 
deed, attempt  to  cloak  itself  behind  fine  phrases,  and 
to  justify  itself  by  appeals  to  noble  plays  and  noble 
lives  which  are  more  numerous  to-day  than  ever  on 
the  stage.  But  it  is  sheer  hypocrisy  to  justify  a 
tawdry  musical  comedy  with  its  vulgar  exhibition 
of  dancing  and  immodest  dressing  by  an  appeal  to 
the  real  possibiUties  of  the  stage.  Theatres  grow 
sensual  because  overworked  or  overfed  men  and 
women  Hke  to  be  sensualized. 

Indiscriminate  denunciation  of  the  theatre  is 
unwise.  But  indiscriminate  approval  of  all  plays 
because  of  the  noble  ideals  of  some  plays  is  just  as 
foohsh.  The  church,  as  the  representative  of  the 
spiritual  ideals,  has  no  war  with  any  amusements 
which  are  healthful  and  uninjurious  to  its  own 
ideals.  Religion,  we  now  see  clearly,  is  not  ascetic. 
Whatever  may  be  claimed  for  the  theatre  as  a 
teacher,  people  go  to  it  not  to  be  taught,  but  to  be 
amused.  A  public  opinion  and  a  public  taste  really 
inspired  by  the  social  ideals  of  the  gospel  would  not 
permit  the  legitimate  function  of  the  theatre  to  be 
prostituted  to  the  office  of  debauching  moral  ideals, 
either  by  treating  them  with  contempt  or  by  too 
frankly  suggestive  discussions  of  matters  which,  in 
the  very  nature  of  the  case,  cannot  be  discussed  with- 


THE   CHURCH   AND   MATERIALISM  211 

out  bringing  moral  debility.  There  is  no  sophism 
so  sophistic  as  that  which  would  say  that  every- 
thing in  hfe  is  fit  material  for  art. 

The  position  of  the  church  and  particularly  of 
religious  teachers  at  this  point  is  difl&cult  and  critical. 
Theoretically,  many  churches  stand  committed  to  a 
complete  opposition  to  popular  and  even  conven- 
tionalized forms  of  amusements.  Practically,  church 
members,  with  the  exception  of  those  who  live  in 
small  towns  and  the  country,  do  not  hesitate  to  go  to 
the  theatre,  play  cards,  and  dance.  If  this  state- 
ment is  too  sweeping  as  a  description  of  the  situation 
at  present,  it  is  undoubtedly  a  description  of  the 
situation  that  will  be  tolerably  universal  in  the  course 
of  a  few  years.  It  is,  of  course,  easy  for  religious 
teachers  to  condemn  such  a  tendency  when  the  con- 
gregation to  which  they  speak  are  not  parties  to  it, 
just  as  it  is  easy  for  the  preacher  to  thunder  against 
the  sins  of  the  rich  when  preaching  to  a  congrega- 
tion of  the  poor.  But  the  problem  is  too  vital  to 
be  left  to  such  ex  parte  treatment.  The  church 
must  learn  to  distinguish  between  real  and  fiat  sins. 
It  must  teach  temperance  in  amusement  rather  than 
the  sinfulness  of  being  amused.  Without  insisting 
that  all  the  spheres  of  human  interest  should  be 
identified,  it  should  with  all  its  strength  endeavor 


212      THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

to  make  every  such  sphere  instinct  with  at  least 
moral  neutrality.  If  a  man  does  not  go  to  a  base- 
ball match,  or  to  a  social  function,  or  to  a  healthy 
play  to  have  his  religious  life  deepened,  it  ought 
at  least  to  be  possible  for  him  to  attend  such  places 
without  his  capacity  for  religious  life  being  lessened. 
And  what  is  even  more  evident,  it  ought  to  be  pos- 
sible for  him  to  escape  the  theatre's  constant  attack 
upon  that  reserve  concerning  the  relations  of  the 
sexes  which  is  one  of  the  truest  safeguards  of  the 
home  from  sensuality  and  divorce. 


At  the  risk  of  appearing  pessimistic,  I  must  notice 
one  other  alarming  tendency  toward  materialism. 

Gambling  has  become  a  disease  threatening  the  in- 
tegrity of  our  entire  social  life.  College  students  bet 
on  their  football  team,  clerks  play  the  races,  business 
men  of  all  classes  buy  stocks  on  the  margin,  husbands 
play  poker,  and  wives  play  bridge.  We  must  leave 
it  to  casuists  and  sociologists  to  decide  just  how  far 
the  universal  attraction  of  games  of  chance  is  legiti- 
mate. Some  legitimacy  must  be  admitted.  The 
danger  does  not  lie  at  this  point,  but  in  the  passion 
for  gaming  which  looks  not  to  the  game,  but  to  the 
gain.   Materialism  of  this  sort  carries  with  it  material- 


THE  CHURCH  AND   MATERIALISM  21 3 

ism  of  almost  every  sort.  The  nerve-racking  anxiety 
makes  the  entire  moral  self  degenerate.  It  is  the  uni- 
versal testimony  that  the  gambUng  habit  is  the  most 
difficult  to  eradicate.  It  saps  the  very  foundations  of 
morality  and  perverts  the  energies  of  the  entire  person. 
There  is  no  pastor  but  knows  the  delicacy  of 
attacking  card-playing  from  the  pulpit.  Perhaps 
more  than  any  subject  of  preaching,  it  arouses  the 
bitterest  hostility.  But  it  is  not  necessary  for  the 
wise  religious  teacher  to  involve  himself  in  just  this 
form  of  discussion.  He  will  find  the  moral  sense  of 
the  community  supporting  him  in  every  temperate 
discussion  of  the  various  forms  of  gambling.  More 
than  that,  he  will  find  most  hearty  support  from  the 
most  influential  members  of  his  church  when  he 
endeavors  'to  warn  the  young  from  this  insidious 
and  debilitating  vice.  The  issue  is  something  much 
bigger  and  more  fundamental  than  whether  or  not 
a  man  should  play  cards  rather  than  checkers. 
It  is  not  a  question  of  amusement;  it  is  a  question 
whether  the  church  will  sit  quietly  by  and  watch  the 
growth  of  a  generation  of  economic  perverts.  The 
struggle  between  the  gospel  and  the  gambling  habit 
is  one  of  life  and  death.  It  is  idle  to  preach  the 
gospel  of  brotherhood  to  a  generation  of  gamblers, 
male  or  female.    It  is  futile  to  attempt  to  urge  the 


214   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

claims  of  noble  living  among  persons  who  are  being 
driven  into  moral  insanity  by  a  devotion  to  any 
sort  of  chance.  Just  as  it  is  not  prudishness  to 
insist  that  our  places  of  public  amusement  should 
not  overstimulate  the  sexual  impulse,  it  is  not 
hyperpuritanism  to  plead. with  a  community  to  turn 
from  the  madness  of  the  bucket-shop  and  the  bridge- 
table.  The  church,  as  the  representative  of  ele- 
mental morality,  of  faith  in  something  other  than 
chance  in  the  universe,  of  trust  in  the  supremacy 
of  love,  must  take  up  a  crusade  not  against  this  or 
that  particular  game,  or  this  or  that  particular  busi- 
ness, but  against  the  whole  accursed  attitude  of 
mind  that  is  incomparably  more  dangerous  than  that 
which  Paul  confronted  in  the  Corinthians,  or  Jesus 
confronted  in  the  publicans.  It  must  fight  sin  — 
concrete,  insidious,  sensual,  attractive  sin.  Until 
the  membership  of  the  church  is  ready  to  practise 
self-mastery  at  this  point,  it  will  inevitably  find  its 
efficiency  curtailed  and  its  evangelistic  message 
transformed  either  into  meaningless  appeal  or 
aesthetic  luxury. 

VI 

Yet,  even  in  materialistic  passions,  we  must  recog- 
nize an  evil  that  is  a  prostituted  good.  A  spreading 
materialism    should    teach   the    church   that    men 


THE  CHURCH  AND   MATERIALISM  21 5 

want  something  more  than  abstract  virtue  or  trans- 
cendental ethics.  It  is  a  perverted  form  of  the  de- 
mand for  reality.  Strange  as  it  may  seem,  in  its 
very  devotion  to  truth  the  church  may  alienate 
the  average  man  and  woman. 

It  is  unfortunate  that  we  have  so  few  descriptions 
of  the  religious  experiences  of  average  people.  We 
have  a  vast  and  helpful  religious  literature  recounting 
the  experiences  and  aspirations  of  men  of  pecuUarly 
religious  temperament;  but  the  average  person  is 
not  an  Augustine  or  a  Thomas  k  Kempis  or  even  a 
Frances  Havergal.  It  is  only  natural,  therefore, 
that  there  should  have  grown  up  the  impression  that 
a  peculiar  temperament  is  needed  for  the  religious 
life.  Most  of  us  believe  only  a  poet  or  a  theologian 
can  think  of  God  and  beauty  and  righteousness. 
Sometimes,  indeed,  it  almost  seems  as  if  the  church 
demanded  that  the  man  who  wishes  to  be  religious 
should  be  so  constituted  as  to  believe  easily  what 
others  say  is  true  and  to  hold  such  beliefs  unaffected 
by  his  other  convictions. 

But  the  average  man  is  in  business.  His  life  has 
no  time  for  poetry  or  philosophy,  and  his  attitude 
toward  what  people  tell  him  is  one  of  caution.  He 
must  not  believe  too  readily.  That  peculiar  tem- 
perament which  seems  to  make  faith  easy  and  reli- 


2l6   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

gious  contemplation  a  joy  is  foreign  to  him.  He 
deals  with  things,  not  with  aspirations.  He  does  not 
dare  trust  his  impulse.  He  trains  himself  to  be  non- 
committal to  fine  sentiments.  Above  all,  he  hates 
professions  of  superiority  and  he  disUkes  to  talk 
about  ideals.  He  even  suspects  those  men  of  his 
own  class  who  occupy  prominent  positions  in  re- 
ligious organizations.  Suspects  them,  not,  it  is 
true,  with  any  good  ground,  nor  for  any  distinct 
reason,  but  simply  because  it  does  not  seem  natural 
for  the  average  man,  as  he  knows  himself  to  be,  to 
experience  what  he  hears  them  describe.  Duty 
he  can  understand;  a  mystical  union  with  God  or 
Christ  seems  very  hard  to  realize.  At  any  rate,  he 
knows  little  about  it. 

Yet  it  would  be  a  great  mistake  to  think  that  such 
a  man  disbelieves  in  Christianity.  He  honors  Jesus, 
and  he  admits  that  a  man's  life  ought  to  be  Christlike. 
His  belief  in  the  Master,  however,  has  few  of  those 
elements  he  is  told  should  characterize  religious  ex- 
perience. His  feeling  toward  Jesus  is  much  like  his 
feeling  toward  his  political  candidate;  he  admires 
him ;  he  will  vote  for  him ;  but  he  never  expects  to 
be  acquainted  with  him.  He  is  rather  surprised 
and  a  little  self-conscious  if  his  minister  calls  upon 
him  at  his  place  of  business,  and  he  has  an  indistinct 


THE  CHURCH  AND  MATERIALISM  21 7 

idea  that  probably  Jesus  in  some  particulars  is  a 
good  deal  like  his  minister. 

Has  religion  any  message  for  such  a  man  with  his 
habit  of  concrete  thought,  with  his  developed  power 
of  concrete  judgment,  and  his  undeveloped  power 
of  spiritual  sympathy  ?  Or  must  he  be  told  to  stand 
apart  and  wait  for  that  experience  which  grows 
the  more  improbable  the  older  he  grows  and  the 
more  closely  he  identifies  faith  with  the  power  of 
estimating  business  credits? 

The  average  man  should  be  helped  to  see  that 
there  is  reality  in  the  sort  of  religion  he  can  live. 
Indeed,  he  should  learn  that  there  are  as  many  forms 
of  Christian  experience  as  there  are  men;  that  the 
vast  majority  of  people  have  no  such  religious  experi- 
ences as  they  wish  to  have.  He  should  be  told  that 
very  few  people,  except  those  gifted  with  a  capacity 
for  such  experiences,  spend  much  time  in  religious 
contemplation,  and  that  the  language  of  noble  books 
has  grown  into  a  conventional  vocabulary  that  ex- 
presses aspiration  quite  as  much  as  accomplishment. 
He  should  realize  that  true  religious  experience  is 
simple,  and,  like  the  water  of  different  springs,  takes 
its  character  from  the  soil  through  which  it  comes 
to  the  surface.  This  elemental  something  in  religion 
is  not  poetic  sentiment  or  even  a  constant  conscious- 


2l8   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

ness  of  union  with  God ;  it  is  life  in  accordance  with 
the  will  of  God.  To  live  thus,  a  man  does  not  need 
to  be  a  philosopher  or  a  poet  or  a  theologian.  He 
needs  simply  to  be  persuaded  that  down  at  the  bottom 
of  things  there  are  reason  and  love ;  and  that  it  is 
best  to  live  as  though  such  love  and  reason  were  real 
—  actually  real.  He  ought  to  be  assured  that  if 
a  man  cannot  distinguish  sharply  between  reUgion 
and  morality,  it  is  probably  because  he  has  come  to 
see  that  there  can  be  no  religion  without  honesty,  and 
no  downright  goodness  without  a  recognition  of  God. 
In  a  word,  the  average  man  needs  in  some  way  to 
be  assured  of  the  reality  of  that  for  which  the  church 
stands.  Assailed  as  he  is  by  the  attractive  material- 
ism of  business  and  pleasure,  he  needs  to  catch  the 
power  of  the  prophet  and  of  the  apostle  and  of  Jesus 
of  seeing  things  that  are  invisible.  He  needs  to  share 
in  the  contagious  conviction  that  the  things  which  are 
not  seen  are  eternal.  Argument  will  not  do  this  as 
readily  as  that  concrete  evidence  which  comes  from 
life.  Probably  the  rank  and  file  of  people  will  never 
come  to  see  just  why  a  man  should  accept  some  of 
the  behefs  that  the  religious  leader  so  confidently 
holds;  but  whether  or  not  the  philosophic  reasons 
for  faith  are  ever  clear  to  him,  any  man  can  ap- 
preciate the  power  of  a  creed  wrought  out  by  hands 


THE  CHURCH  AND  MATERIALISM  219 

and  feet.  The  church  must  meet  the  appeal  of 
materialism  by  its  own  appeal  of  concrete,  regenerate 
living,  by  good  deeds,  the  sacrifice  of  monopolized 
privilege,  the  practical  recognition  of  the  calls  of 
economic  and  social  justice,  the  service  of  the  poor, 
and  the  institutionalizing  of  the  Christian  impulse  to 
love.  It  must  herald  reality,  not  merely  truth. 
It  must  meet  the  honest  doubt  as  to  the  reality  of 
the  Father  by  publishing  the  historic  reality  of  the 
Son.  It  must  incarnate  the  truth  of  the  gospel  of 
Jesus  in  the  well-knit  body  of  the  Christian  society, 
of  which  he  is  the  Head.  It  must  spur  society  to 
demonstrate  the  rationality  of  love  by  inculcating 
social  service  and  sacrifice,  as  fundamental  laws 
of  our  economic  life.  In  industry  as  in  religion, 
"love  builds  up." 

If  the  church  thus  deals  with  realities  rather  than 
with  speculation ;  if  it  expresses  the  social  meaning 
of  those  great  doctrines  for  which  it  stands,  —  it  will 
help  men  to  recognize  the  wickedness  of  some  of  those 
influences  about  which  they  find  themselves  per- 
plexed. We  could  all  be  more  honest  if  we  wanted 
to.  The  religion  which  will  be  thus  engendered  in 
the  rank  and  file  of  men  and  women  by  the  modem 
prophet,  whether  he  be  lay  or  clerical,  will  be  some- 
thing more  than  a  formal  repetition  of  a  creed  or  a 


220   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

devotion  to  that  which  is  felt  to  be  impalpable  utter 
worldliness.  It  may  not  be  a  poet's  experience,  or  a 
philosopher's  experience,  that  the  church  will  thus 
breed  in  the  great  world  of  affairs,  but  it  will  be  an 
experience  that  will  come  inevitably  to  the  average 
man  who,  without  peculiar  religious  endowments, 
is  convinced  of  the  great  realities  which  poets  sing 
and  apostles  herald,  and  who  has  been  tr3dng  to 
live  in  accordance  with  the  will  of  a  very  real  God 
and  in  the  light  of  a  very  real  gospel. 
And  it  will  express  itself  in  very  real  service. 

VII 

Will  the  church  inspire  its  members  with  this 
passion  for  spiritual  realities?  Will  it  train  up  men 
and  women  who  will  place  wealth  and  physical 
pleasures  in  the  true  perspective  of  the  good  things 
of  life?  Or  will  it  choose  silence  or  academic 
generalities  or  indiscriminate  denunciation  as  the 
easier  alternative?  Will  professedly  Christian  men 
and  women  praise  the  martyrs  of  the  sword  and  of 
the  fagot  and  forget  that  the  gospel  calls  for  witness- 
ing against  the  idolatry  of  creature  comforts  and 
the  allurements  of  animalism,  as  truly  to-day  as  in 
the  days  of  Domitian  and  Decius  ?  Is  it  too  much  to 
hope  that  the  disciples  of  the  Prince  of  Peace  shall 


THE  CHURCH  AND   MATERIALISM  221 

show  as  much  loyalty  to  his  Cause  as  the  unhappy 
Russian  revolutionist  devotes  to  his?  Will  the 
church  grow  tolerant  enough  to  insure  a  united  front 
against  its  real  foes  —  materialism,  sensuality,  greed, 
class  hatred,  merciless  struggle  for  wealth  ? 

What  shall  be  the  fate  of  the  church  that  does  not 
inspire  and  purify  a  materialistic  age  ? 

The  fate  of  salt  that  has  lost  its  savor. 


CHAPTER   Vm 

THE  SWORD  OF  THE  CHRIST 

"I  CAME  not  to  send  peace,  but  a  sword,"  said 
Jesus. 

We  do  not  ordinarily  think  of  the  sword  as  a  type 
of  the  gospel.  The  church  has  preferred  the  cross. 
Yet  the  two  symbols  supplement  each  other.  The 
Christian  life  is,  indeed,  one  of  submission  to  God's 
will,  but  it  is  also  one  of  conflict  and  heroic  leader- 
ship. The  gospel  is  a  message  of  love,  but  it  is  also 
the  occasion  of  hatred.  In  an  evil  world  peace  is 
possible  only  on  terms  of  a  good  man's  surrender 
to  the  evil.  Christ  preferred  the  struggle  and  the 
consequent  suffering. 

I 

The  church  has  at  least  one  message  to  the  world 
that  the  world  does  not  want  to  hear.  It  is  the  mes- 
sage of  sin.  To  the  church  as  to  the  ancient  prophet 
there  comes  the  divine  call  to  assume  the  responsi- 
bility of  a  watchman  set  to  warn  against  danger. 

The  reason  that  the  great  gospel  of  immortality 
and  brotherly  love  is  not  more  acceptable  to  men  and 

222 


THE  SWOSD  OF  THE  CHSIST  333 

women  is  not  primarily  that  it  is  miintelligible;  it 
is  rather  because  they  have  no  sense  of  a  moral  need 
to  which  such  a  gospel  comes  as  a  message  of  peace. 
Calloused  oHisdences  are  only  further  deadened 
by  talks  about  the  divine  fatherhood  and  the  sahrar 
tion  brought  by  Christ  Jesus.  The  age  is  suffering 
from  moral  self-complacency.  It  is  the  business  oi 
the  church  at  all  costs  to  startle  it  into  self-exami- 
nation and  repentance.  The  changing  order  must 
be  given  a  conscience  To  some  extent  this  is 
being  accomplished.  In  the  United  States,  at  least, 
during  the  past  two  years  we  have  seen  the  public 
conscience  awakened  as  it  has  not  been  awakened 
for  two  generations.  Confused  with  class  hatred, 
as  is  this  moral  renaissance,  it  is  ncme  the  less  a 
thing  for  which  to  be  thankfuL  The  naticm  is  in 
some  way  aroused  from  the  lethargy  bom  of  com- 
mercial materialism  and  is  demanding  that  commer- 
cialism itself  shall  at  least  respect  the  rules  of  the 
game. 

How  far  the  church  has  been  the  source  of  this 
new  pubUc  conscience,  it  would  be  hard  to  state. 
Its  influence,  however  great,  has  not  been  as  great 
as  the  influence  of  Christian  idealism  which  has 
spread  out  from  the  church  but  to  a  considerable 
extent  r^ards  itself  as  fatherless  and  modiedesB  as 


224   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

Melchizedek.  But  this  is  no  cause  for  discourage- 
ment on  the  part  of  the  church ;  it  is  rather  a  call 
to  more  vigorous  endeavor.  A  careful  observer  of 
current  events  must  see  that  in  the  reforming  zeal 
of  men  and  women  between  thirty  and  fifty  years  of 
age  who  are  the  real  leaders  of  these  movements, 
we  are  reaping  some  of  the  indirect  results  of  the 
Sunday-school  and  particularly  of  the  young  people's 
movements. 

But  the  singular  thing  is  that  the  church  is  failing 
to  exploit  the  new  moral  situation.  Its  conception 
of  its  mission  is  still  controlled  by  a  too  individual- 
istic view  of  man.  It  prays  for  revivals,  but  wants 
revivals  of  its  own  choosing.  Just  as  the  primitive 
church,  because  its  programme  for  the  coming  of  Christ 
involved  cataclysms  and  miracles,  failed  to  see  a  real 
coming  of  Christ  in  the  development  of  a  new  social 
conscience  among  its  members,  has  the  modem 
church  failed  to  see  that  the  revival  for  which  it 
prayed  is  here.  True,  it  is  a  different  revival  from 
those  under  Finney  and  Moody,  although  it  would 
be  a  mistake  to  think  that  the  methods  of  those 
men  are  altogether  outgrown;  but  the  church  is 
none  the  less  living  in  the  midst  of  a  revival  with 
which  it  ought  to  cooperate  and  which  it  ought  to 
utilize  for  its  own  development.    For  that  revival, 


THE   SWORD   OF   THE  CHRIST  225 

incipient  though  it  may  be,  is  a  part  of  the  changing 
order. 

Essential  Christianity  is  conquering  the  consciences 
of  men,  but  unless  the  church  fulfils  its  mission  as  an 
awakener  of  still  deeper  moral  discontent,  of  a  more 
intense  hatred  of  hypocrisy  and  selfishness  and 
greed,  of  a  new  horror  of  the  social  aspects  of  sin,  it 
will  become  a  mere  survival  in  the  social  organism. 

The  church  must  do  something  more  than  de- 
nounce sin;  it  must  educate  society  to  loathe  sins, 
and  seek  righteousness.  It  must  still  further  study 
the  moral  motives  of  men  already  aroused  in  order 
to  insure  that  we  do  not  presently  suffer  one  of  those 
depressing  reactions  to  which  American  people 
are  so  subject.  The  church  must  educate  men  to 
withstand  moral  fatigue.  It  must  so  organize  and 
direct  the  awakened  conscience  that  it  shall  not 
suffer  the  otherwise  inevitable  penalties  of  overstrain. 
Such  a  call  as  this  is  something  more  than  one  to 
hold  delightful  religious  services.  What  sort  of  con- 
ception of  its  social  significance  and  of  social  ser- 
vice and  of  moral  appeal  has  a  church  that  spends 
thousands  for  a  quartette  of  singers  and  all  but 
nothing  for  missions  ?  Such  a  church  is  little  bet- 
ter than  a  high  class  culture  club  —  a  purveyor  of 
aesthetic  soporific  to  moral  unrest.    To  well-to-do, 

Q 


226   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

comfortably  housed,  intelligent  middle  class  people, 
it  can  preach  release  from  struggle,  repose  in  God, 
deliverance  from  anxiety,  emancipation  from  the 
storms  of  passion,  but  is  this  its  only  mission? 
May  not  this  be  the  tithing  of  mint  and  anise  and 
cummin  and  the  forgetting  of  the  weightier  matters 
of  justice,  mercy,  and  faith  ?  The  peace  of  which 
Jesus  spoke  is  the  peace  which  comes  to  a  soul  that 
has  been  morally  disturbed;  the  peace  that  goes 
with  the  yoke  of  service.  It  is  the  peace  which  comes 
alone  to  the  man  who,  struggling  after  God  and 
battling  against  evil  in  himself  and  in  society,  trusts 
a  God  of  love  who  is  also  a  God  of  law.  Such  peace 
is  neither  the  child  nor  the  father  of  inaction.  Re- 
ligious indifference  is  no  more  the  rest  of  faith  than 
chronic  meddlesomeness  is  conscience.  The  Greek 
honored  courage  no  more  truly  than  did  Jesus. 
He  saw  the  kingdom  of  God  being  stormed  by 
strong  men.  He  foretold  that  friend  would  rise 
against  friend;  that  a  man's  foes  were  those  of  his 
own  household ;  and  he  promised  deliverance  only 
to  those  who  were  strong  enough  to  endure. 

The  Christian  life  is  to  be  something  more  than 
one  of  patient  submission  to  moral  evil.  Such  aid 
as  the  church  renders  those  who  have  fallen  in  the 
struggle  of  life :  its  hospitals,  its  homes  for  the  poor 


THE   SWORD   OF   THE   CHRIST  227 

and  aged,  its  ministrations  to  the  children  of  the 
slums,  its  rescuing  of  the  fallen ; — all  this  is  noble  and 
only  too  sadly  needed.  But  the  church  must  stand 
for  justice  as  well  as  for  charity.  For  charity  is  as 
truly  a  tribute  to  the  failure  as  to  the  success  of  the 
gospel.  A  triumphant  church  will  be  something 
more  than  the  Red  Cross  Society  of  social  evolu- 
tion. It  is  as  much  the  business  of  the  Christian 
to  maintain  an  eflScient  police  force  as  it  is  to  main- 
tain an  effective  ambulance  corps.  The  church  must 
do  something  more  than  to  bind  up  the  wounds  of 
an  abused  humanity.  Good  Samaritans  presuppose 
robbers.  The  church  must  train  people  to  see  to  it 
that  the  road  from  Jerusalem  to  Jericho  is  safe  for 
travellers. 

n 

Such  an  heroic  programme  summons  the  church 
to  undertake  an  heroic  social  leadership. 

Leadership  means  leaders.  In  religion  as  in  every- 
thing else,  what  is  everybody's  business  is  nobody's 
business. 

Just  at  present  the  church  seems  in  danger  of 
growing  mcapable  of  producing  leaders.  There  is 
nothing  more  threatening  to  the  growth  of  evangelical 
Christianity  than  the  failure  of  men  to  go  into  the 
ministry.    We  may  philosophically  say  that  there 


228   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

are  curves  which  rise  and  fall  in  successive  genera- 
tions; we  may  be  filled  with  a  sane  optimism  bom 
of  a  faith  in  the  divine  order  of  things  which  will 
lead  us  to  believe  that  as  far  as  an  effective  ministry 
is  concerned,  the  falling  curve  will  rise  again;  but 
just  at  present  a  rightfully  ambitious  Christianity 
faces  alarming  conditions.  Notwithstanding  the 
growth  of  the  church,  notwithstanding  the  large 
growth  of  the  community,  there  are  no  more  men 
in  our  theological  seminaries  to-day  than  there  were 
seventeen  years  ago;  in  some  denominations  and 
in  nearly  every  country  in  the  world  there  are  barely 
half  as  many  as  there  were  ten  years  ago.  And  these 
denominations  and  these  countries  or  sections  of 
country  in  which  this  decrease  of  trained  religious 
leaders  is  found  are  those  which  have  shared  most 
generously  in  the  prosperity  of  a  commercial  age, 
have  partaken  most  completely  of  the  fruits  of  an 
intellectual  revival,  and  have  most  completely  come 
under  the  influence  of  the  forces  that  are  making 
To-morrow. 

The  changing  order  is  growing  ministerially  sterile. 

We  long  since  learned  that  the  city  church  is  too 
much  a  parasite  upon  country  churches  both  for 
its  leading  members  and  for  its  pastors.  It  is  the 
small  church  and  the  small  town  and  the  "un- 


THE   SWORD   OF  THE  CHRIST  229 

modem"  community  that  have  always  supplied 
the  ministry.  And  in  proportion  as  these  smaller 
churches,  towns,  and  communities  share  in  the 
economic  and  intellectual  hfe  of  the  cities  is  this 
supply  being  cut  off.  The  little  springs  that  fed 
the  rivers  are  drying  up.  In  place  of  leaders,  too 
often  appear  untrained  or  but  poorly  trained  cham- 
pions of  the  past.  In  some  denominations  like  the 
Baptist  and  the  Congregationalist,  the  entire  annual 
output  of  the  denominational  colleges  north  of  the 
Ohio  and  east  of  the  Mississippi  would  barely  make 
a  respectable  entering  class  in  a  single  theological 
school  of  each  denomination.  In  the  South  and  in 
the  Southwest  the  situation  is  not  yet  so  serious, 
but  as  industrialism  and  the  new  education  spread 
over  these  sections  the  same  antiforces  will  be 
operative  —  are  indeed  in  some  sections  already 
operative. 

Who  is  agitating  the  question  of  ministerial 
supply?  Not  pastors,  but  professors  in  colleges 
and  theological  seminaries  and  secretaries  of  Young 
Men's  Christian  Associations.  Ministers  are  silent, 
because  they  do  not  want  their  sons  to  go  into  the 
ministry.  At  a  recent  great  convention  of  theologi- 
cal students,  only  a  fraction  of  nearly  five  hundred 
delegates  came  from  ministers'  families.    Fathers 


230   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

and  mothers  do  not  want  their  sons  to  be  ministers. 
Individual  churches  are  indifferent.  Those  with 
a  young  man  among  their  membership  who  is 
studying  for  the  ministry  are  the  exceptions.  Chris- 
tians of  maturity  in  America,  Scotland,  England,  and 
Germany  do  not  want  to  be  ministers.  They  do  not 
see  just  what  the  function  of  the  ministry  is.  In  the 
vast  majority  of  cases,  the  decision  to  go  into  the 
ministry  is  made  by  boys  in  academies  and  even 
before  they  enter  the  secondary  schools.  As  a 
result,  one  of  the  largest  problems  that  beset 
Christian  education  is  how  to  prevent  young  fel- 
lows from  losing  their  early  ambitions  during  the  col- 
lege or  university  course.  And  many  such  college 
students  are  more  eager  to  be  married  than  to  be 
trained  for  real  leadership  as  ministers  1 

III 

Too  many  theological  seminaries  are  failing  to 
send  out  trained  leaders  of  the  church. 

In  the  first  place,  as  a  class,  they  are  committed 
to  a  commercialized  method  of  offering  their  students 
financial  aid.  How  much  respect  can  a  strong  young 
man  have  for  the  ministry  when  he  sees  men  no 
poorer  and  with  no  poorer  prospects  than  himself 
offered  free  tuition  and  free  room  rent  and  an  out- 


THE   SWORD   OF   THE   CHRIST  231 

right  gift  of  two  or  three  hundred  dollars  a  year  in 
cash,  if  only  they  will  enter  some  theological  seminary  ? 
There  are  sacrifices,  indeed,  in  the  ministry,  but 
prophets  should  not  be  hired  to  go  to  school.  Some 
of  our  theological  seminaries  and  our  educational 
societies  are  teaching  the  ministers  of  the  future  the 
dangerous  lesson  of  ministerial  discounts  and  other 
forms  of  sanctified  graft.  Some,  it  is  to  be  hoped 
many,  men  will  rise  above  such  influences,  but  what 
sort  of  social  leadership  or  what  call  to  virile  sacrifice 
can  this  subsidizing  of  ministerial  students  beget? 
If  seminaries  have  funds  for  student  aid,  why  should 
they  not  use  these  funds  to  pay  students  for  reas- 
onable but  actual  service  to  weak  churches?  If 
such  an  arrangement  made  their  students  poorer 
in  pocket,  it  would,  nevertheless,  leave  them  richer 
in  self-respect. 

In  the  second  place,  too  many  theological  semina- 
ries fail  properly  to  educate  men  for  leadership  in  a 
transitional  age.  There  are  notable  exceptions  here, 
but  the  curriculum  of  most  theological  seminaries 
was  practically  determined  two  hundred  years  ago. 
The  thoughtful  student  coming  to  them  fresh  from 
the  last  year  or  two  of  his  undergraduate  work  in 
college  is  apt  to  be  nonplussed  at  finding  himself 
forced  to  devote  himself  to  matters  remote  from  life. 


232   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

Instead  of  dealing  with  the  vital  matters  involved 
in  philosophy,  sociology,  political  economy,  and 
literature,  he  finds  himself  forced  to  a  wearisome 
study  of  languages  and  a  memorizing  of  theological 
text-books.  Hour  after  hour  he  struggles  with  the 
details  of  grammar  as  if  the  salvation  of  society  hung 
from  an  iota  subscript.  Occasionally,  it  is  true,  he 
meets  a  professor  for  the  discussion  of  some  large 
theme  in  Christian  worid  or  thought,  but  throughout 
the  first  and  second  years  of  the  ordinary  seminary 
course,  his  efforts  are  mainly  restricted  to  an  attempt 
to  master  material  which  he  knows  and  everybody 
else  knows  will  be  all  but  useless  for  him  when  he 
enters  a  pastorate.  "The  first  thing  I  did  after 
leaving  the  seminary,"  I  once  heard  A.  J.  Gordon 
say,  "was  to  try  to  forget  what  I  had  been  taught 
in  the  seminary." 

Why  this  attempt  to  force  theological  students  to 
devote  to  unusable  studies  time  which  might  be  given 
to  the  study  of  Christian  truth  or  to  actual  conditions 
of  the  human  beings  among  whom  they  must  work  ? 
Why  should  a  theological  student  be  forced  into 
scholastic  moulds,  while  the  medical  student  is  work- 
ing in  the  clinic  ?  The  reply  given  by  the  seminaries 
who  persist  in  this  sin  against  the  changing  order 
amounts  to  nothing  more  nor  less  than  that  it  has 


THE   SWORD   OF   THE  CHRIST  233 

always  been  customary  to  train  theological  students 
in  this  way ! 

Fortunately,  however,  within  the  last  decade,  there 
have  developed  some  radically  different  ideas  as 
to  how  a  minister  should  be  prepared  for  his  work, 
and  it  is  already  possible  to  speak  of  two  conceptions 
as  dominating  theological  teaching,  using  that  term 
in  its  widest  sense. 

On  the  one  side,  there  is  the  scholastic  conception 
to  which  allusion  has  been  made,  which  yet  obtains 
in  the  larger  number  of  theological  schools.  The 
course  is  almost  entirely  prescribed,  and  the  student 
is  seldom  free  to  choose  subjects  to  his  own  liking. 
The  attitude  of  mind  cultivated  is  not  one  of  investi- 
gation, but  rather  that  of  receptivity  and  submission 
to  authority.  The  church  to  which  the  student 
belongs  is  assumed  to  possess  the  truth,  and  all  that 
is  required  of  him  is  to  remember  it  and  defend  it. 
Of  that  actual  social  life  into  which  he  is  to  be 
plunged,  he  is  taught  no  more  than  if  he  were  to 
work  on  Mars. 

Over  against  this  conception,  there  is  rapidly 
growing  up  that  of  the  seminary  of  the  more  pro- 
gressive type.  The  attitude  which  such  a  modem 
school  attempts  to  develop  in  its  classrooms  is  not 
that  of  the  mere  reception,  but  rather  of  the  recog- 


234   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

nition  of  truth.  It  belittles  neither  the  gospel  mes- 
sage nor  the  age.  It  seeks  to  prepare  its  student 
for  his  supreme  duty  of  bringing  the  gospel  to  his 
own  age  through  his  own  personahty. 

The  new  type  of  theological  seminary  is  no  less 
scholarly  than  its  predecessor,  but  it  refuses  to 
sanction  scholasticism.  It  knows,  for  example, 
the  value  of  Hebrew  and  cognate  languages  and 
provides  most  elaborate  opportunities  for  those  who 
may  really  be  benefited  by  studying  them.  But 
it  knows,  also,  that  it  is  perverse  pedagogy  to  compel 
every  student,  regardless  of  his  linguistic  gifts,  to 
study  them  as  mere  languages.  If  they  are  to  be 
studied,  it  is  only  as  preliminary  to  other  courses  in 
history  and  biblical  theology.  It  would  interest  the 
men  it  is  training  for  social  leadership  in  the  content 
rather  in  the  language  of  the  Bible. 

It  is  characteristic,  also,  of  the  new  movement  in 
theological  education  that  its  spirit  is  increasingly 
scientific.  Its  students  are  no  longer  obliged  to 
abandon  their  habits  of  thought  when  they  enter  a 
classroom.  With  possibly  one  exception,  there  is 
no  prominent  theological  school  to  my  knowledge  in 
which  bibhcal  instruction  is  not  given  with  more  or 
less  pronounced  opposition  to  the  methods  of 
older  biblical  teachers.     The  critical  method   has 


THE   SWORD  OF  THE  CHRIST  235 

triumphed,  even  when  its  results  are  rejected.  The- 
ology, as  taught  in  these  progressive  seminaries,  is  no 
longer  a  mere  aggregation  of  proof  texts  or  a  be- 
scriptured  philosophy.  It  is  rather  a  painstaking 
induction  from  facts  furnished  alike  by  the  Bible, 
sociology,  history,  psychology,  and  epistemology. 
The  man  trained  in  a  theological  school  of  the  modem 
type  fears  no  fact  or  any  search  for  facts.  He  has 
his  convictions,  but  he  believes  omniscience  to  be  a 
prerogative  of  the  Deity  and  not  of  himself  or  of  his 
teachers.  And  what  is  of  far  larger  significance, 
he  does  not  have  to  look  in  a  treatise  of  theology  to 
find  out  what  he  believes. 

The  older  scholastic  training  for  the  ministry  is 
thus  being  replaced  by  a  training  that  seeks  to  fit 
men  not  only  to  recognize  evangelic  truth,  but  also 
to  use  it  in  real  life. 

It  is  a  grievous  shame  that  the  minister  should  be 
left  to  work  out  such  problems  as  he  must  confront, 
without  some  sort  of  training  which  shall  prepare  him 
to  solve  them.  Here,  also,  our  theological  seminaries 
are  seriously  at  fault.  It  is  true  some  of  them  have 
occasional  lectures  upon  Christian  sociology,  and 
there  are  a  few  schools  where  students  are  given  a 
genuine  opportunity  for  training  in  work  among 
the  masses  of  a  city.    But  this  should  be  true  of  all 


236   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

seminaries.  Such  work  as  that  done  at  the  Chicago 
Commons,  and  other  social  settlements,  as  well 
as  clinical  practice  as  evangelists,  Sunday-school 
workers,  and  pastors  of  small  country  churches 
should  be  a  part  of  the  curriculum  of  every  theological 
school.  To  train  men  how  to  act  in  the  pulpit,  how 
to  conduct  prayer-meetings,  how  to  make  pastoral 
calls,  how  to  write  sermons,  and  how  to  deliver 
them  —  all  this  Is  indispensable,  but  no  more  in- 
dispensable than  to  train  them  in  sociology  and 
pohtical  economy  and  pedagogy,  until  they  know 
what  not  to  tamper  with,  and  to  see  clearly  at  what 
point  they  will  find  the  least  resistance  to  the  moral 
and  religious  message  it  is  their  business  to  socialize. 
It  is  a  mistake  to  think  that  theological  training, 
such  as  this,  makes  a  man  less  sure  of  his  mission  as 
a  representative  of  Jesus  Christ,  or  less  effective  in 
ministering  to  the  spiritual  needs  of  his  community. 
I  have,  for  instance,  before  me  statistics  showing 
that  conversions  in  a  dozen  churches  served  by  men 
so  trained  are  twice  as  numerous  as  in  churches  of 
similar  strength  in  the  same  state  served  by  men  of  the 
older  type.  The  fact  is,  the  newer  theological  training 
makes  men  profoimdly  rehgious  and  capable  of  real 
leadership.  Through  it.  Christian  truth  becomes 
something  more  than  a  "system."    It  is  something 


THE  SWORD   OF   THE   CHRIST  237 

to  be  experienced,  not  merely  logically  proved. 
Subtle  questions  of  metaphysical  theology  are  dis- 
cussed, and,  if  possible,  answered,  but  they  are  not 
made  the  substance  of  the  minister's  message.  That 
must  be  intelligible,  vital,  dynamic.  Individuals 
must  be  taught  truth  that  can  be  put  into  life  as  well 
as  into  books.  Ministerial  efficiency  thus  becomes, 
on  the  one  hand,  a  matter  of  a  minister's  spiritual 
life  through  faith,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  a  matter 
of  teaching,  service,  and  organization  bom  of  such 
spiritual  Ufe. 

But  at  this  point  the  church  faces  another  vital 
decision:  Will  it  permit  men  thus  trained  to  enter 
pastorates  ? 

No  man  to-day  enters  the  ministry  without  passing 
some  sort  of  examination  by  representatives  of  the 
denomination  to  which  he  belongs.  In  many  cases 
this  examination  is  conducted  impartially  and  with 
full  sense  of  the  difficulties  with  which  young  men 
are  beset  in  the  early  years  of  thought.  In  other 
cases  it  is  hardly  more  than  an  attempt  to  show  the 
heretical  teaching  of  the  theological  school  from 
which  the  young  man  comes,  or  a  heartless  cross- 
examination  in  questions  of  scholastic  theology. 
No  man  who  knows  anything  about  young  men  will 
deny  that  dread  of  these  examinations  and  that  which 


238   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

they  represent,  works  against  their  entering  the  min- 
istry. It  is  not  so  much  that  the  student  is  con- 
scious of  holding  views  that  are  unorthodox;  it  is 
rather  that  he  suspects  that  in  some  way  his  freedom 
of  thought  will  be  limited  if  he  becomes  a  minister. 
The  justice  of  this  suspicion  no  minister  would  be 
ready  to  admit  as  a  universal  condition,  but  at  the 
same  time  it  is  only  too  true  that  there  are  self- 
appointed  heresy  hunters  in  every  denomination, 
who  not  only  oppose  the  views  with  which  they  differ, 
but  who  make  it  a  part  of  their  life-work  to  "mark" 
a  man  who  is  too  liberal  for  them ;  men  who  create 
suspicion  of  those  they  distrust  by  letters  written 
to  pulpit  committees  of  various  churches;  men  who 
do  not  hesitate  to  bring  such  pressure  to  bear  within 
ecclesiastical  circles  as  wiU  sooner  or  later  force  their 
victim  from  their  vicinity,  if  not  from  their  denomi- 
nation. 

In  part,  of  course,  such  an  attitude  of  mind,  and 
such  habits  of  petty  persecution,  are  matters  of  tem- 
perament and  lack  of  a  genuine  Christian  spirit, 
but  in  a  large  measure  they  depend  upon  a  conception 
of  the  functions  of  the  ministry  that  results  from 
the  training  given  men  in  their  schools.  Instead  of 
considering  himself  as  essentially  one  who  deals 
with  life  and  facts,  the  theological  student  in  the  past 


THE   SWORD   OF   THE  CHRIST  239 

found  himself  constantly  confronted  with  the  im- 
portance of  conformity.  It  is  naturally  difficult 
for  men  thus  trained  to  realize  that  there  are  others 
who,  thanks  to  their  education,  as  well  as  to  the  pre- 
vailing spirit  of  the  age,  find  themselves  at  their 
graduation  from  college  intellectually  uncertain  on 
many  points  about  which  their  fathers  had  no 
question. 

As  has  already  been  said,  the  inevitable,  therefore, 
has  happened.  An  increasing  number  of  Christian 
young  men  prefer  teaching  to  preaching.  As 
teachers  of  non-theological  studies,  they  hope  to 
exercise  religious  influence  without  credal  tests. 
Others  enter  the  new  social  welfare  work  which  is 
destined  to  be  one  of  the  most  important  influences 
in  the  renovation  of  modem  society.  Such  men  can 
be  trained  for  practical  efficiency  as  helpers  of  their 
fellow-men,  and  as  representatives  of  a  Christian- 
ity of  deeds  rather  than  of  beUefs.  Too  few  of  our 
theological  seminaries  are  imdertaking  to  train  them. 
But  it  will  be  a  great  loss  to  the  ministry  if  they  are 
not  numbered  within  its  ranks.  Otherwise  they  will 
rapidly  form  a  class  of  social  leaders  distinct  from, 
if,  indeed,  not  out  of  sympathy  with,  the  churches. 
It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  future  will  open  some 
way  by  which  these  men  can  be  saved  to  the 


240      THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING   ORDER 

churches  rather  than  forced  to  work  outside  of  the 
churches. 

The  church  must  once  more  offer  ambitious  young 
men  a  career;  not  only  a  career  that  offers  prefer- 
ment in  ofl5ce,  but,  above  all  else,  one  that  a  man  bom 
to  be  a  leader  can  see  is  full  of  opportunities  to  do 
something  more  than  make  social  calls  and  utter 
beautiful  thoughts. 

At  the  best,  the  life  of  a  sincere  minister  of  the 
gospel  is  full  of  loneliness  of  soul,  of  overtaxed 
sympathies,  of  self-searching,  and  of  spiritual  con- 
flict. He  is  a  priest  between  man  and  God,  between 
society  and  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  He  cannot 
be  manufactured,  but  he  can  be  trained.  But  to 
fit  him  for  this  sacred  office  is  a  larger  question  than 
one  of  courses  and  hours  of  recitation.  If  it  is 
foolish  pedagogy  to  think  that  students  must  be 
compelled  to  take  certain  courses  in  order  that  a 
professor  or  a  department  may  have  employment, 
it  is  fatal  pedagogy  to  hold  that  the  aim  of  a  theo- 
logical education  is  the  production  of  lecturers  on 
religious  and  moral  topics.  Ministers  are,  in  the 
best  sense  of  the  word,  men  of  affairs,  promoters. 
They  should  be  trained  to  bring  things  to  pass,  not 
merely  to  "edify"  saints  and  threaten  or  comfort 
sinners.    To  arouse  the  rehgious  life,  to  make  it 


THE   SWORD   OF   THE  CHRIST  24I 

intelligent  and  moral,  to  organize  or  to  assist  in  or- 
ganizing it  into  social  groups  of  all  sorts — that  is  the 
real  function  of  the  minister.  He  has  his  message, 
he  has  his  church,  he  has  his  world.  Let  him  be 
trained  to  bring  things  to  pass,  and  once  trained, 
let  him  be  given  a  real  opportunity  to  bring  things 

to  pass. 

IV 

But  social  leadership  of  the  church  involves  some- 
thing more,  even,  than  the  production  and  the  proper 
training  of  ministers.  It  cannot  be  too  often  reit- 
erated that  the  church  members  themselves  should 
be  moral  leaders  in  their  respective  fields.  It  is, 
of  course,  impossible  to  suppose  that  every  professed 
Christian  will  be  a  man  or  woman  of  importance. 
Church  membership  is  no  guarantee  of  large  in- 
fluence, but  the  churches  include  many,  and  ought 
to  include  more,  men  and  women  who  represent  the 
actual  formative  forces  of  society.  If  the  minister 
cannot  inspire  them,  let  them  inspire  the  minister. 
The  merchant,  quite  as  much  as  the  scholar,  paved  the 
way  for  reformation  in  modem  Europe,  and  the 
teacher  and  the  lawyer  and  the  doctor  ought  to 
cooperate  with  every  sanely  progressive  impulse 
that  the  pastor  may  exhibit  or  can  be  induced  to 
exhibit. 

X 


242   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

It  has  been  charged  that  church  members  have, 
in  the  past,  opposed  social  reform.  Garrison  and 
the  abohtionists  failed  to  find  the  support  they 
demanded  from  many  of  the  churches  of  their  time, 
even  in  NewEngland.  The  Earl  of  Shaftesbury  could 
say  that  he  had  received  httle  or  no  assistance  from 
the  clergy.  But,  in  a  large  degree,  the  new  social 
consciousness  has  changed  this  attitude,  and,  as  has 
already  been  emphasized,  professedly  Christian  men 
and  women  are  now  among  the  most  ardent  sup- 
porters of  every  good  cause.  But  the  rank  and 
file  of  the  church  must  also  lead  in  moral  matters. 
Although  as  an  organization  the  church  is  not  to  have 
a  programme,  its  members  ought  to  be  trained  to 
moral  efficiency,  and  particularly  to  a  speedy  support 
and  leadership  of  every  good  cause  looking  toward 
the  amehoration  and  the  transformation  of  social  con- 
ditions. It  should  require  no  argument  to  prove  to  a 
church  member  that  there  is  need  of  some  radical 
legislation  to  rid  old  age  of  its  terrors.  There  may 
be  some  question  as  to  the  details  of  establishing 
industrial  insurance,  the  regulation  of  the  liquor 
traffic,  the  prevention  of  child  labor,  and  the  safe- 
guarding of  the  home  from  the  miseries  of  drink  and 
divorce,  but  no  condemnation  will  be  strong  enough 
for  organized  Christianity  if  the  present  generation 


THE   SWORD  OF  THE  CHRIST  243 

is  not  trained  in  church  services  and  Sunday-schools 
to  champion  such  causes.  A  man  does  not  need  to  be 
a  specialist  in  sociology  to  vote  for  honest  men  at  the 
polls  or  for  honest  candidates  at  the  primaries.  A 
man  does  not  need  to  be  a  philosopher  to  realize 
that  it  is  better  to  follow  a  Christian  impulse  than  it 
is  to  refuse  to  support  movements  that  attempt  to 
correct  evils  that  are  sapping  the  strength  of  an  entire 
nation.  Socialistic  and  premillinarian  pessimism,  it 
is  true,  would  prevent  ameliorative  efforts;  but  the 
common  sense  of  a  community,  if  once  it  is  touched 
by  the  human  sympathy  bom  of  the  gospel,  can 
always  be  trusted  to  follow  reasonable  religious 
leaders. 

Unless  the  church  really  takes  itself  seriously  in 
these  matters,  we  shall  see  an  increased  tendency  for 
social  workers  to  leave  its  ranks.  Suspicion  of  the 
church  as  a  bourgeois  group  standing  for  the  privi- 
leges of  the  well-to-do  can  be  overcome  only  by  the 
manly  enthusiasm  of  self-sacrifice  and  brotherhood. 
The  Christian  man,  particularly  the  leader  in  the 
work  of  the  church,  should  not  be  deterred  from 
emphasizing  such  fundamental  verities  because  they 
are  called  "  generalities."  The  world  will  not  be  saved 
by  novelties  or  fads.  Real  leadership  will  consist 
in  making  the  fundamental  t;i7{iths  of  the  gospel,  be 


244   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

they  never  so  familiar,  the  warp  and  woof  of  social 
change.  Indeed,  one  of  the  greatest  needs  of  the 
day  is  a  revival  of  the  vivid  preaching  of  doctrinal 
commonplaces.  Our  pulpits  presuppose  altogether 
too  much  knowledge  of  Christian  truth  in  the  part 
of  the  pews.  A  generation  trained  in  such  "gen- 
eralities" as  God,  sin,  immortality,  and  duty  will 
not  be  hkely  to  grow  morally  or  evangelically 
nerveless. 

It  is  a  tribute  to  the  fact  that  the  church  is  really 
beginning  to  undertake  something  of  this  funda- 
mental preaching  and  this  social  leadership,  that  so 
many  men  decline  to  enter  it.  There  have  been 
epochs  when  a  man  could  be  at  the  same  time  a 
rascal  and  a  good  churchman;  but  there  never 
will  be  a  time  when  a  man  can  be  a  rascal  and  a 
Christian.  The  world  is  getting  to  appreciate  this 
fact.  The  refusal  on  the  part  of  men  who  have  grown 
morally  callous  to  enter  the  church  is  an  unexpected 
testimony  to  an  ineradicable  honesty  in  humanity. 
A  man  might  be  ready  to  profess  allegiance  to  a 
set  of  doctrines,  even  while  conscious  of  his  own 
moral  delinquencies,  but  he  is  slow  to  take  a  pubUc 
stand  as  a  representative  of  a  system  whose  standard 
is  declared  to  be  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  and  whose 
watchword  is  the  Golden  Rule.    Unwilling  to  be 


THE   SWORD   OF   THE   CHRIST  245 

religious  h)^crites,  such  men  undertake  to  belittle 
the  church.  Their  hostihty  is  but  new  testimony 
that  the  sword  of  the  Christ  has  not  grown  dull. 


Social  leadership  of  the  church  must  be  exercised 
by  men  whose  faces  are  set  to  the  future.  The 
church  must  follow  modem  men;  modem,  that  is, 
in  the  really  noble  sense  of  that  word,  not  in  the  sense 
of  those  who  claim  the  title  because  they  find  their 
faith  in  the  historic  gospel  growing  weaker  and  who 
are,  therefore,  growing  increasingly  out  of  sympathy 
with  earnest  rehgious  effort.  The  really  modem 
Christian  is  not  a  doctrinaire  recluse,  but  a  man  who 
beheves  in  sociahzing  a  positive,  evangelic  message 
in  terms  of  to-day's  creative  thinking  and  among 
men  who  are  actually  transforming  the  world.  Such 
men  form  the  vicarious  tenth  of  society;  the  frac- 
tion of  a  community  that  carries  its  burdens. 

There  are  thousands  of  men  and  women  who  are 
incapable  of  leading  and  who  want  to  be  led.  There 
are  thousands  of  other  men  and  women  who  are 
anachronisms  pure  and  simple.  They  do  not  know 
that  the  modem  world  has  begun,  or  if  they  believe 
it,  cannot  see  any  difference  between  the  great  con- 
structive forces  of  to-day  and  those  which  have  been 


246  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

at  work  in  the  past.  It  is  no  accident  that  the  Eng- 
lish historian  who,  in  1863,  published  a  "History  of 
Federal  Government  from  the  Achaean  League  to 
the  Disruption  of  the  United  States,"  also  declared 
that  modem  history  began  with  the  departure  of 
Abraham  from  Ur  of  the  Chaldeans.  To  such  a 
mind,  Abraham  was  more  intelligible  than  Abraham 
Lincoln.  Human  anachronisms  must  be  saved,  but 
they  cannot  be  the  saviours  of  society.  Such  office 
awaits  only  those  who,  with  the  enthusiasm  of  Mes- 
sianic hope,  are  ready  to  follow  Jesus  out  from  some 
comfortable  Galilee  to  an  Easter  Day  of  intelligent 
faith  along  a  road  that  runs  through  some  Geth- 
semane  of  doubt  and  over  some  Calvary  of  vicarious 
service. 

There  will  be  no  salvation  for  the  changing  order 
at  the  hands  of  theological  demagogues  who  can 
raise  a  storm  of  applause  by  an  appeal  to  the  past 
or  to  the  prejudices  of  men  trained  to  think  in  ways 
long  since  abandoned  by  men  who  really  think. 
Theological  "safety"  never  begat  a  real  leader. 
And,  although  a  theological  radical  is  at  best  hardly 
more  constructive  than  any  other  irritant,  the  genuine 
modem  man  does  not  stand  for  religious  partisanship 
or  iconoclasm,  but  for  that  spiritual  impulse  which  is 
bom  of  a  new  sense  of  ethical  values  and  of  an  over- 


THE   SWORD   OF  THE   CHRIST  247 

mastering  confidence  in  the  sanity  and  the  inevitable- 
ness  of  righteousness.  He  knows  the  sanctity  of 
facts  as  well  as  the  dynamics  of  new  ideals.  The 
older  he  grows,  the  surer  he  is  that  while  some  things 
are  passing  away,  there  are  verities  that  remain. 
That  infectious  devotion  to  reality  which  the  scien- 
tific attitude  of  mind  involves  and  which  the  newer 
type  of  thought  in  the  church  is  emphasizing,  has 
only  to  be  given  free  scope  to  change  an  age  of 
reUgious  indifference  into  an  age  of  religious  en- 
thusiasm. That  change  is  even  now  in  progress. 
Whether  or  not  there  shall  arise  a  new  age  of  ec- 
clesiastical enthusiasm  will  depend  upon  the  men 
now  in  control  of  ecclesiastical  institutions.  Rehgion, 
in  a  broad  and  truly  evangelic  sense,  must  certainly 
grow  more  powerful.  Whether  or  not  the  church 
as  an  institution  will  share  in  such  growth  will  be 
determined  by  the  attitude  which  the  church  takes 
toward  men  who  might  become,  and  ought  to  become, 
its  real  leaders. 

Nor  is  this  aspect  of  the  present  crisis  merely 
local.  The  task  that  must  be  taken  up  by  the  church, 
if  it  is  to  be  a  genuine  leader  in  the  changing  order, 
is  world-wide.  A  missionary  church  is  the  only  con- 
ceivable effective  church.  And  a  missionary  church 
must  face  the  future.    With  nations  being  bom  anew 


248  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  QRDER 

through  the  influence  of  a  new  age,  the  church  must 
do  something  more  than  exhort  the  heathen  to 
accept  a  sixteenth- century  theology.  Foreign  mis- 
sions, as  a  part  of  the  sociaHzation  of  the  gospel,  must 
partake  of  the  ideals  of  social  as  well  as  of  individual 
regeneration.  Since  the  time  of  the  early  apostles, 
there  never  has  been  an  opportunity  like  to-day's 
for  real  statesmanship  in  missionary  undertakings. 
Fortunately,  our  missionary  leaders  are  seeing  this. 
They  are  founding  schools  as  well  as  chapels;  they 
are  sending  doctors  as  well  as  Bible  women  to  the 
millions  of  China  and  India.  Foreign  missions  as 
well  as  the  church  at  home  must  be  led  by  men  of 
to-day  rather  than  of  the  past.  We  should  not  send 
theological  radicals  to  China  and  Japan ;  but  until 
these  nations  evolve  as  they  surely  must  evolve,  their 
own  type  of  Christianity,  we  must  send  them  men 
who  will  not  be  content  to  preach  a  mechanical 
theology  or  a  mechanical  theory  of  inspiration  or  a 
distrust  of  our  new  intellectual  and  social  forces. 
These  forces  are  operating  in  the  Far  East  as  truly 
as  in  America.  The  surest  way  for  missions  to 
commit  slow  suicide  is  for  missionary  boards  to 
reject  thoroughly  trained  men  to  whom  the  Lord  has 
given  a  vision  of  a  New  Earth,  but  who  are  unable 
to  meet  technical  theological  tests  upon  which  the 


THE   SWORD   OF  THE  CHRIST  249 

representatives  of  the  older  order  of  things  insist. 
The  nations  of  the  earth  need,  not  an  oflScialized 
orthodoxy,  but  well  grounded,  intelligently  directed, 
constructive  enthusiasm  for  the  gospel  of  the  risen 
Christ  and  human  brotherhood. 

VI 

There  is  nothing  more  difl5cult  to  transfer  to  the 
region  of  practice  than  this  insistence  upon  expansive 
and  enhghtened  Christian  love.  Almost  incompre- 
hensibly, the  higher  one's  ideals,  the  more  difl&cult 
does  a  genuine  fraternity  become.  The  man  of 
vision  sees  with  ever  increasing  ease  the  frailties 
and  follies  and  sins  of  people.  But  if  the  church  is 
to  produce  social  leaders,  it  must  offset  this  incipient 
cynicism  by  training  its  leaders  to  take  each  other 
at  their  highest,  rather  than  at  their  lowest,  values. 
The  conscientious  man  must  do  something  more 
than  criticise  his  neighbor.  Religious  leaders  need 
something  even  more  positive  than  tolerance.  They 
must  choose  to  be  martyrs  rather  than  persecutors. 
They  must  fight  sin  —  not  each  other.  They  must 
be  ready  to  stake  their  lives  on  the  faith  that  they  are 
nearer  God's  character  when  they  suffer,  rather  than 
when  they  cause  evil. 

If  anything  were  needed  to  prove  that  our  age 


250  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

is  morally  out  of  joint,  it  is  the  fact  that  kindness  so 
often  reacts  injuriously  upon  its  author.  A  selfish 
age  can  endure  its  critics  more  complacently  than  its 
benefactors.  We  appoint  investigating  committees 
for  our  heroes  and  relegate  philanthropists  to  the 
comic  papers.  We  too  often  fear  to  profess  moral 
earnestness  lest  our  neighbors  shall  consider  us 
charlatans  or  poseurs.  The  penalty  of  generosity 
is  pubhcity  and  of  publicity  abuse.  The  reward  of 
love  is  often  distrust  and  hate. 

It  was  something  of  this  that  Jesus  had  particu- 
larly in  mind  when  He  spoke  about  sending  a  sword 
into  the  world.  His  words  are  a  call  to  heroism. 
He  meant  to  say  that  a  man  who  would  live  a  life 
of  love  and  of  social  service  and  a  devotion  to  the 
ideals  which  He  was  teaching  would  find  bad  men 
hating  Him.  He  meant  to  say  that  the  most  mad- 
dening thing  for  privileged,  selfish  men  is  not  the 
aristocratic  virtue  of  the  ecclesiastic,  but  the  demo- 
cratic altruism  of  the  Christ.  But  He  would  also  say 
that  the  future  lies  with  the  opposed  and  even  op- 
pressed champion  of  fraternity.  He  himself  was 
to  triumph  by  being  defeated.  He  was  to  save  His 
life  by  losing  it.  And  disciples  are  not  above  their 
lord. 

How  largely  the  modem  attitude  of  mind  that 


THE   SWORD  OF  THE  CHRIST  251 

honors  both  the  law  of  the  statute  book  and  the 
law  of  the  laboratory  is  vitalizing  religious  teaching, 
is  apparent  to  any  man  who  is  more  than  a  partisan. 
But  there  is  still  opportunity  for  the  prophet  who 
dares  face  the  pit  and  exile.  The  moral  renaissance 
to  which  reference  has  already  been  made,  calls 
especially  to  men  who  combine  large  vision  with 
evangehc  impulse.  It  is  not  so  much  here  a  question 
of  a  liberal  or  a  reactionary  theology  as  it  is  of 
genuine  discipleship  of  the  kingdom.  Upon  whom 
should  the  sense  of  responsibility  for  evangelizing 
the  changing  order  rest  more  heavily  than  upon  men 
and  women  who  have  acquired  some  sense  of  moral 
proportion;  to  whom  life  is  something  more  than 
an  aggregation  of  equally  important  duties?  There 
never  was  a  time  when  breadth  of  view  could  be  so 
readily  transformed  into  genuine  moral  and  religious 
fervor  as  to-day,  among  men  and  women  through 
whose  pulses  beats  the  new  life  of  To-morrow. 
And  such  men  and  women  will  not  only  wash  the 
outside  of  the  cup;  they  will  cleanse  the  inside  as 
well. 

The  man  who  can  refuse  to  be  swept  into  a  cru- 
sade against  conventions  because  he  would  devote  his 
strength  to  vital  issues ;  who  will  refuse  to  be  drawn 
into  controversy  over  metaphysical  theology  because 


252   THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

he  knows  that  true  evangelism  is  a  matter  of  life 
rather  than  of  theories  of  life;  who  finds  in  the 
entire  universe  no  mechanical  duaUsm,  but  rather 
one  supreme  Father  who  would  have  His  creatures 
sons  and  brothers  —  such  a  man  can  furnish  the 
perspective  for  religious  work  that  will  banish  in- 
difference and  bring  moral  and  spiritual  enthusiasm 
to  minds  confused  with  the  doubts  that  spring  from 
our  ever  growing  sense  of  the  ignorance  of  knowl- 
edge. 

To  whom  shall  we  look  for  members  of  that  vi- 
carious tenth  of  society,  who,  by  bearing  other 
people's  burdens,  will  make  a  new  age  full  of  more 
serious  faith  in  God  and  of  more  hearty  self-sacrifice 
for  others  ?  To  the  ignorant  man  who,  however  well 
intentioned,  must  always  be  limited  by  his  narrow 
environment?  To  the  man  of  cjnical  culture  to 
whom  moral  distinctions  are  of  small  importance,  and 
whose  emotions  are  less  stirred  by  the  spectacle  of  a 
moral  revolution  than  by  the  faded  colors  of  an  old 
master?  To  the  absorbed  student  who,  oblivious 
to  the  ocean  of  life  about  him,  sees  only  the  drop  he 
would  patiently  investigate?  To  the  stem  eccle- 
siastic who  would  break  an  opponent's  usefuhiess 
because  of  his  refusal  to  assent  to  an  admittedly 
unthinkable  proposition? 


THE   SWORD   OF   THE   CEOaST  253 

Rather  shall  we  not  turn  to  those  men  of  generous 
culture  who,  seeing  but  not  exaggerating,  the  diffi- 
culties of  many  traditional  affirmations,  see  also 
an  eternal  God  present  in  the  universe,  believe  in  the 
reaUty  of  a  risen  Christ,  and  are  ready  to  consecrate 
their  lives  to  preventing  the  changing  order  from 
resulting  in  an  age  where  social  and  economic  con- 
ditions shall  be  determined  only  by  the  terms  which 
the  victors  may  grant  the  vanquished  ? 

To-day,  as  never  before,  there  is  a  call  for  heroes  in 
full  sympathy  with  the  scholarship  and  the  discontent 
and  the  hopes  thatjpossess  the  new  age,  yet  filled 
with  faith  in  a  God  of  justice  and  love.  As 
one-  hears  that  call,  how  petty  and  unworthy  seem 
the  dififerences  men  of  evangelic  fervor  have  allowed 
to  breed  schism.  The  sword  of  Jesus  is,  indeed,  in 
the  world  —  but  not  to  set  evangelists  against 
teachers,  or  pastors  against  theologians.  He  who 
has  his  own  trained  personahty  as  his  one  great 
asset  cannot  invest  it  better  than  in  a  superbly 
cooperative  efiFort  to  direct  a  transitional  era  toward 
a  more  dynamic  faith  in  Jesus  and  a  deeper 
brotherliness  among  men.  The  call  which  Jesus 
would  make  to  men  and  women  of  large  vision  in  such 
an  age  is  not  to  enjoy  their  liberties,  but  to  serve 
their  fellows. 


254  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

Above  all,  does  this  call  come  to  his  church.  There 
too,  in  a  far  larger  sense  than  even  yet  is  realized, 
must  there  be  fraternity  in  a  co-working  of  the 
members  which  will  make  the  Body  the  true  servant 
of  the  Head. 

VII 

Our  eyes  at  times  may  be  slow  to  see  the  way  as 
clearly  as  we  should  like  to  see  it;  our  judgments 
may  sometimes  be  mistaken.  An  honest  conscience 
and  even  an  ambition  to  be  brotherly  cannot  always 
guarantee  us  from  mistakes.  But  one  thing  is  cer- 
tain ;  despite  his  mistakes,  a  man  who  devotes  his  life 
to  the  cause  of  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  will  not 
be  laboring  in  vain.  With  such  a  Master  it  is 
better  to  use  the  one  talent  even  at  the  risk  of  losing 
it  than  to  bury  and  so  save  it.  It  is  better  to  be 
morally  earnest  and  make  mistakes  than  to  be  mor- 
ally indifferent  and  avoid  them.  It  is  better  to  suffer 
with  the  Prophet  of  Nazareth  than  to  triumph  with 
Annas,  Caiphas,  and  Pilate.  It  is  better  to  fight 
against  the  indifference  of  culture  and  the  materi- 
alism of  a  commercial  age  at  the  risk  of  winning  a 
reputation  for  quixotic  enthusiasm  and  commercial 
obtuseness  than  to  permit  the  evangelic  light  that 
is  within  us  to  become  darkness. 

Those  of  us  who  make  this  choice  which  Jesus 


THE  SWORD  OF  THE  CHRIST  255 

made  and  left  as  one  of  His  last  commands  to  His 
church,  may  not  live  to  see  our  ambitions  for  a  new 
social  order  fulfilled  or  some  millennium  dawn,  but 
we  shall  at  least  have  sold  our  lives  dearly  in  fighting 
for  the  cause  that,  as  surely  as  there  is  a  God  in 
heaven,  must  ultimately  win.  For  we  shall  have  done 
our  part  to  make  the  gospel  of  Jesus  and  the  Spirit, 
of  immortality  and  brotherhood,  a  power  of  God 
unto  salvation,  not  only  to  individual  men  and 
women,  but  to  the  changing  order. 

**  Charge  again  then,  and  be  dumb  1 
Let  the  victors  when  they  come, 
When  the  forts  of  folly  fall, 
Find  thy  body  by  the  wall  I " 


The  Social  Teachings  of  Jesus 

An  Essay  in  Christian  Sociology 


BY 


SHAILER   MATHEWS,  A.M. 

Professor  of  New  Testament  History  and  Interpretation  tn 
the  University  of  Chicago 


i2mo.    Cloth.    $1.50 


Outlook  : 

"  Such  a  study  is  sure  to  be  useful,  and  if  the  reader  sometimes  feels 
that  the  Jesus  here  presented  has  the  spirit  of  which  the  world  for  the 
most  part  approves  rather  than  that  which  brings  its  persecution,  he 
will  with  renewed  interest  turn  to  the  words  of  Jesus  as  narrated  in  th« 
four  Gospels." 

Christian  Index  : 

"  We  commend  Professor  Mathews's  book  to  all  interested  in  matters 
sociological,  exegetical,  and  to  all  Christians  who  desire  to  know  the 
will  of  their  Lord  and  Master." 

Congregationalist : 

"  The  author  is  scholarly,  devout,  awake  to  all  modern  thought,  and 
yet  conservative  and  preeminently  sane." 

The  Evangel : 

"  Professor  Mathews  gives  the  thoughtful  reader  a  veritable  feast  in 
this  essay  in  Christian  Sociology.  It  is  well  thought  out  and  carefully 
written.  ...  It  is  surely  an  able  book,  worthy  of  careful  perusal,  and 
gives  promise  of  exerting  a  permanent  influence  upon  Christian  thought 
and  Ufe." 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

66  FIFTH  AVENITE,  NEW  YORK 


New  Testament  Handbooks 


EDITED  BY 


SHAILER  MATHEWS 

^refiuor  of  New  Testament  History  and  Interfretaium, 

University  of  Chicago 

Arrangements  are  made  for  the  following  volumes,  and  the  publishers 
will,  on  request,  send  notice  of  the  issue  of  each  volume  as  it  appears  and 
each  descriptive  circular  sent  out  later;  such  requests  for  information 
should  state  whether  address  is  permanent  or  not :  — 

The  History  of  the  Textual  Criticism  of  the 
New  Testament 

Prof.  Majivin  R.  Vincent,  Professor  of  New  Testament  Exegesis, 
Union  Theological  Seminary.  \_Now  ready. 

Professor  Vincent's  contributions  to  the  study  of  the  New  Testament  rank  him 
among  the  first  Amencan  exegetes.  His  most  recent  publication  is  "  A  Critical 
and  Exegetical  Commentary  on  the  Episdes  to  the  Phillppians  and  to  Philemon" 
[Jnternattonal  Critical  Commentary)  which  was  preceded  by  a  "  Students' 
SrsT"        "    Handbook,"  "Word  Studies  in  the  New  Testament,"  arTd 

The  History  of  the  Higher  Criticism  of  the 
New  Testament 

Pirof.  Henry  S.  Nash,  Professor  of  New  Testament  Interpretation, 
Cambridge  Divinity  School.  [^^  ^eady. 

Of  Professor  Nash's  "Genesis  of  the  Social  Conscience,"  The  Outlook  said:  "  The 
results  of  Professor  Nash  s  npe  thought  are  presented  in  a  luminous,  compact, 
and  often  epigrammatic  style.  The  treatment  is  at  once  masterful  and  helpful 
and  the  book  ought  to  be  a  quickening  influence  of  the  highest  kind;  it  surelv 
will  establish  the  fame  of  its  author  as  a  profound  thinker,  one  from  whom  we 
nave  a  nght  to  expect  future  inspiration  of  a  kindred  sort." 

Introduction  to  the  Boolcs  of  the  New  Testament 

Prof.  B.  WiSNER  Bacon,  Professor  of  New  Testament  Interpretation, 

Yale  University.  [^^  ^^^^^. 

Prof^sor  Bacon's   works  in  the  field  of  Old  Testament  criticism  include  "The 

Triple  Tradition  of  Exodus,"  and  "  The  Genesis  of  Genesis,"  a  study  of  the 

documentary  sources  of  the  books  of  Moses.     In  the  field  of  New  Testament 

«^/   K  "as  published  a  number  of  brilliant  papers,  the  most  recent  of  which  is 

Ihe  Autobiography  of  Jesus,"  in  the  American  journal  of  Theology. 

The  History  of  New  Testament  Times  in  Palestine 

Prof.  Shailer  Mathews,  Professor  of  New  Testament  History  and 
Interpretation,  The  University  of  Chicago.  \^Now  ready. 

The  Conn^eirationalist  says  of  Prof.  Shailer  Mathews's  recent  work,  "The  Social 
leaching  of  Jesus  :  Re-reading  deepens  the  impression  that  the  author  is 
scholarlv,  devout,  awake  to  all  modem  thought,  alid  yet  conservative  and  pre- 
eminently sane.  If,  after  reading  the  chapters  dealing  with  Jesus'  attitude 
toward  man,  society,  the  family,  the  state,  and  wealth,  the  reader  will  not  astee 
with  us  m  this  opmion,  we  greatly  err  as  prophets." 


The  Teaching  of  Jesus 

Prof.  George  B.  Stevens,  Professor  of  Systematic  Theology,  Yale 
University.  \^N<riV  ready. 

Professor  Stevens's  volumes  upon  "The  Johannine  Theology,"  "The 
Pauline  Theology,"  as  well  as  his  recent  volume  on  "  The  Theology 
of  the  New  Testament,"  have  made  him  probably  the  most  prominent 
writer  on  biblical  theology  in  America.  His  new  volume  will  be 
among  the  most  important  of  his  works. 

The  Biblical  Theology  of  the  New  Testament 

Prof.  E.  P.  Gould,  Professor  of  New  Testament  Interpretation,  Prot- 
estant Episcopal  Divinity  School,  Philadelphia.    \^Norw  ready. 

Professor  Gould's  Commentaries  on  the  Gospel  of  Mark  (in  the  Inter- 
national Critical  Commentary)  and  the  Epistles  to  the  Corinthians  (in 
the  American  Commentary)  are  critical  and  exegetical  attempts  to 
supply  those  elements  which  are  lacking  in  existing  works  of  the  same 
gener^  aim  and  scope. 


"  An  excellent  series  of  scholarly,  yet  concise  and  inexpensive  New  Testa- 
ment handbooks."  —  Christian  Advocate,  New  York. 

"  These  books  are  remarkably  well  suited  in  language,  style,  and  price,  to 
all  students  of  the  New  Testament." —  754*  CongregaHonalist,  Boston. 

OTHERS  TO  FOLLOW 

The  Life  of  Paul 

Prof.  Rush  Rhees,  President  of  the  University  of  Rochester. 

Professor  Rhees  is  well  known  from  his  series  of  "  Inductive  Lessons,"  con- 
tributed to  the  Sunday  School  Times.  His  "  Outline  of  the  Life  of 
Paul,"  privately  printed,  has  had  a  flattering  reception  from  New  Tes- 
tament scholars. 

The  History  of  the  Apostolic  Age 

Dr.  C.  W.  VOTAW,  Instructor  in  New  Testament  Literature,  The 
University  of  Chicago. 

Of  Dr.  Votaw's  "Inductive  Study  of  the  Founding  of  the  Christian 
Church,"  Modem  Church,  Edinburgh,  says :  "  No  fuller  analjrsis  of  the 
later  books  of  the  New  Testament  could  be  desired,  and  no  better  pro- 
gramme could  be  offered  for  their  smdy,  than  that  afforded  in  the 
scheme  of  fifty  lesssons  on  the  Founding  of  the  Christian  Church,  by 
Clyde  W.  Votaw.  It  is  well  adapted  alike  for  practical  and  more 
scholarly  students  of  the  Bible." 

The  History  of  Christian  Literature  until  Eusebius 

Prof.  J.  W.  Platner,  Professor  of  Early  Church   History,   Harvard 

University. 
Professor  Platner's  work  will  not  only  treat  the  writings  of  the  early  Christian 
writers,  but  will  also  treat  of  the  history  of  the  New  Testament  Canon. 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

64-66  FIFTH  AVENUE,  NEW  YOBK 


New  Testament  Handbooks 


EDITED  BY 

SHAILER  MATHEWS 

Professor  of  New  Testament  History  and  Interfretatum, 
University  of  Chicago 

Arrangements  are  made  for  the  following  volumes,  and  the  publishers 
will,  on  request,  send  notice  of  the  issue  of  each  volume  as  it  appears  and 
each  descriptive  circular  sent  out  later;  such  requests  for  information 
should  state  whether  address  is  permanent  or  not :  — 

The  History  of  the  Textual  Criticism  of  the 
New  Testament 

Prof.  Marvin  R.  Vincent,  Professor  of  New  Testament  Exegesis, 
Union  Theological  Seminary.  \_Now  ready. 

Professor  Vincent's  contributions  to  the  study  of  the  New  Testament  rank  him 
among  the  first  American  exegetes.  His  most  recent  publication  is  "  A  Critical 
and  Exegetical  Commentary  on  the  Epistles  to  the  Phihppians  and  to  Philemon  " 
{International  Critical  Commentary) ,  which  was  preceded  by  a  "  Students' 
New  Testament  Handbook,"  "  Word  Studies  in  the  New  Testament,"  and 
others. 

The  History  of  the  Higher  Criticism  of  the 

New  Testament 
Pirof.  Henry  S.  Nash,  Professor  of  New  Testament  Interpretation, 
Cambridge  Divinity  School.  \_Now  ready. 

Of  Professor  Nash's  "  Genesis  of  the  Social  Conscience,"  The  Outlook  said:  "  The 
results  of  Professor  Nash's  ripe  thought  are  presented  in  a  luminous,  compact, 
and  often  epigrammatic  style.  The  treatment  is  at  once  masterful  and  helpful, 
and  the  book  ought  to  be  a  quickening  influence  of  the  highest  kind;  it  surely 
will  establish  the  fame  of  its  author  as  a  profound  thinker,  one  from  whom  we 
have  a  right  to  expect  future  inspiration  of  a  kindred  sort." 

Introduction  to  the  Books  of  the  New  Testament 

Prof.  B.  WiSNER  Bacon,  Professor  of  New  Testament  Interpretation, 
Yale  University.  [Now  ready. 

Professor  Bacon's  works  in  the  field  of  Old  Testament  criticism  include  "  The 
Triple  Tradition  of  Exodus,"  and  "  The  Genesis  of  Genesis,"  a  study  of  the 
documentary  sources  of  the  books  of  Moses.  In  the  field  of  New  Testament 
study  he  has  published  a  number  of  brilliant  papers,  the  most  recent  of  which  is 
"The  Autobiography  of  Jesus,"  in  the  American  journal  of  Theology . 

The  History  of  New  Testament  Times  in  Palestine 

Prof.  Shailer  Mathews,  Professor  of  New  Testament  History  and 
Interpretation,  The  University  of  Chicago.  \^Now  ready. 

The  Coneregationalist  says  of  Prof.  Shailer  Mathews's  recent  work,  "  The  Social 
Teaching  of  Jesus":  "Re-reading  deepens  the  impression  that  the  author  is 
scholarly,  devout,  awake  to  all  modem  thought,  atid  yet  conservative  and  pre- 
eminently sane.  _  If,  after  reading  the  chapters  dealing  with  Jesus'  attitude 
toward  man,  society,  the  family,  the  state,  and  wealth,  the  reader  will  not  anree 
with  us  in  this  opinion,  we  greatly  err  as  prophets." 


The  Teaching  of  Jesus 

Prof.  George  B.  Stevens,  Professor  of  Systematic  Theology,  Yale 
University.  [^Now  ready. 

Professor  Stevens's  volumes  upon  "The  Johannine  Theology,"  "The 
Pauline  Theology,"  as  well  as  his  recent  volume  on  "  The  Theology 
of  the  New  Testament,"  have  made  him  probably  the  most  prominent 
writer  on  biblical  theology  in  America.  His  new  volume  will  be 
among  the  most  important  of  his  works. 

The  Biblical  Theology  of  the  New  Testament 

Prof.  E.  P.  Gould,  Professor  of  New  Testament  Interpretation,  Prot- 
estant Episcopal  Divinity  School,  Philadelphia.     [^Now  ready. 

Professor  Gould's  Commentaries  on  the  Gospel  of  Mark  (in  the  Inter- 
national Critical  Commentary)  and  the  Epistles  to  the  Corinthians  (in 
the  American  Commentary)  are  critical  and  exegetical  attempts  to 
supply  those  elements  which  are  lacking  in  existing  works  of  the  same 
general  aim  and  scope. 


"  An  excellent  series  of  scholarly,  yet  concise  and  inexpensive  New  Testa- 
ment handbooks."  —  Christian  Advocate,  New  York. 

"  These  books  are  remarkably  well  suited  in  language,  style,  and  price,  to 
all  students  of  the  New  Testament." —  The  Congregationalist,  Boston. 

OTHERS  TO  FOLLOW 
The  Life  of  Paul 

Prof.  Rush  Rhees,  President  of  the  University  of  Rochester. 

Professor  Rhees  is  well  known  from  his  series  of  "  Inductive  Lessons,"  con- 
tributed to  the  Sunday  School  Times.  His  "  Outline  of  the  Life  of 
Paul,"  privately  printed,  has  had  a  flattering  reception  from  New  Tes- 
tament scholars. 

The  History  of  the  Apostolic  Age 

Dr.  C.   W.  VoTAW,   Instructor  in  Nevir  Testament  Literature,  The 

University  of  Chicago. 

Of  Dr.  Votaw's  "Inductive  Study  of  the  Founding  of  the  Christian 
Church,"  Modem  Church,  Edinburgh,  says :  "  No  fuller  analysis  of  the 
later  books  of  the  New  Testament  could  be  desired,  and  no  better  pro- 
gramme could  be  offered  for  their  study,  than  that  afforded  in  the 
scheme  of  fifty  lesssons  on  the  Founding  of  the  Christian  Church,  by 
Clyde  W.  Votaw.  It  is  well  adapted  alike  for  practical  and  more 
scholarly  students  of  the  Bible." 

The  History  of  Christian  Literature  until  Eusebius 

Prof.  J.  W.  Platner,  Professor  of  Early  Church   History,   Harvard 

University. 
Professor  Platner's  work  will  not  only  treat  the  writings  of  the  early  Christian 
writers,  but  will  also  treat  of  the  history  of  the  New  Testament  Canon. 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

64-66  FIFTH  AVENUE,  NEW  YOEK 


In  Any  Study  of  the  Relations 
of  Christ  and  the  Modem  Life 

These  books  are  of  special  value :  — 

Dr.  Joseph  Alexander  Leighton's 

Jesus  Christ  and  the  Civilization  of  To-day 

%i.So  net 
Rev.  Walter  Rauschenbusch's 

Christianity  and  the  Social  Crisis  $i-5o  net 

Dr.  Francis  G.  Peabody's 

Jesus  Christ  and  the  Social  Question  $1.50 

Jesus  Christ  and  the  Christian  Character  $1.50  net 

Dr.  Newell  Dwight  Hillis's 

The  Influence  of  Christ  in  Modern  Life       %i.5o 

Dr.  Henry  S.  Nash's 

Genesis  of  the  Social  Conscience  ti-5o 

Ethics  and  Revelation  $1.50 

Pres.  Henry  C.  King's 

Theology  and  the  Social  Consciousness        $1.25  net 
Rational  Living  $1-50  net 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

PUBLISHEBS,    64-66   FIFTH   AVENUE,    NEW   YOBK 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  AT  LOS  ANGELES 

THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  helow 

APR  0       ia42  I  " 

""'^";!i?K.l'SKRY  FACILITY 
SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY    90024-1388 

fromwWchK>W8borr^^ 


Form: 

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3  1158  00042  1932 


/ 


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I  Hill  Hill  II II   III   nil  III  III   ii|iii  II II 1 1 


A     001  000  937     1 


Un. 


